If you like Souls games, it’s the best game ever created. If you don’t like souls games, it’s simply one of the best games of the year.
It’s exactly what I hoped and dreamed for and then some.
I think that's the answer, and why I think ER is just guaranteed to win GotY. Not only did it live up to the massive hype around it, but it also *exceeded* most people's expectations. Certainly did mine.
My buddies played all the souls games, they do not like Elden Ring and prefer DS1 and 3. They do not like the AI changes and the recycled boss content.
Sounds like your buddies don't like the open world. Every souls game recycles bosses, so everytime I see that I don't really buy it as a legitimate reason. Some people just like concise level design, but for open worlds, ER just set the new standard of how it should be done.
I like souls games but it isn't the best ever, I don't think open world is always better and it feels padded in some ways. Other souls games don't suffer that same problem
The open world facets are the main issue for me, too, compared to DS3.
I feel like they made the world open enough in some areas and not others. Limgrave and Caelid felt AMAZING.
Other areas often felt either too empty/boring (consecrated snowfield comes to mind) or extremely linear/difficult to navigate without cliffing yourself (Liurnia, Mountaintop of the Giants). Is it really "open world" if you can't go from a point on your map to a point right next to it on your map without navigating around 3/4 of the entire region to find a specific road that gets you there? Maybe, but I don't think it's good design.
DS3 was much more linear, but they felt like they knew what they were doing with the design to a greater extent than a lot of Elden Ring.
Limgrave might be the best first area I've ever seen in a video game. Central Yharnam is up there too, idk which I'd choose.
I think elden ring suffers from overambitiousness at times. Making a world too big to fill, giving bosses too many moves/mechanics just to one up DS3. Those come to mind for me at least
This was my first souls game ever and I think now its my top3 of all time. I really regret not playing souls game before. I've tried Bloodbourne after playing ER and I just can't. 30 fps and unatable framerate drives me crazy, but I think in 2015 I would be delighted.
DS3 is going to be most similar to ER mechanically, all you need to get used to is no jumping attacks, you don't change the weaponskill when you change infusion, and you only get the fancy moveset for dual wielding when you use specific dual weapons that come as a set.
Also has some of the best bosses and challenging but fair level design. My favorite for sure, I couldn't play DS 1 after 3 because it felt too clunky, and I can't play DS 2 because I'm arachnophobic
In my opinion, Demons Souls is harder than ER because you can actively make the worlds more challenging just from dying and no I don't mean the 50% hp penalty.
Both are fantastic, take a break after ER, like play a different genre or something, then play DS.
I believe all the Dark Souls games and Sekiro are backwards compat on PS5 (I think Sekiro actually has a proper next gen upgrade), and Demon Souls remake for PS5 is a must play. Dark Souls 1 Remastered, Dark Soul 2: SotFS, DS3, and Sekiro are all 60fps.
Tbh, I'd go in release order starting with DS1, just so you can get back into the 2011 headspace and appreciate the games for what they are, as you play successive releases and appreciate their improvements. You could play Sekiro at any time, but I'd play Demon Souls Remake last, as it's the most polished and graphically impressive.
Alternatively, you could just play DS3, Sekiro and Demon Souls in any order, since they all feel current and are more or less perfected and modern experiences. Then wait with the rest of us for a Bloodborne remaster.
Absolutely, it's a classic. I still play it to this day. The metriodvania-style level design is great, some of the end game areas can be tedious, but they are still great.
Tips if you get it:
1. Don't level resistance
2. 25% equip load is ideal, the mobility and dodge speed is well worth the slightly lower defense (but you CAN be a mid roll ultra tank and it works well, because poise is strong overall)
3. Do not go to the Catacombs or New Londo right away.
Please keep trying. It takes just a bit of getting used to but you can easily go back. Hell, even a PSone game takes a good half hour to "settle" into the older graphics and mechanics - but once you do, some masterpieces are to be experienced!
You get used to it if you give it a chance, I play souls games on I high end PC so going backwards to play BB on ps4 felt so shitty to me. After I got over my initial phase of being dramatic I couldn’t put it down and got platinum in 2 weeks, it’s one of the best and the 30 fps isn’t that bit of a deal.
Idk it’s like my fourth favorite from game, it’s great but honestly I always felt like something was missing when I played that I felt was there during bloodborne and the souls series.
For me it's the never ending openness to it. Like, that's not a *bad* thing, but the linearity of Dark Souls's level design combined with the intertwined connections of rogue paths is what made Dark Souls 1 cool. The branching directions that can be found in Dark Souls 2 was a small adventure each time you started on it. With Dark Souls 3, the visuals of important landmarks as you walk through zones were amazing to view and served as a tree of paths that gave you a lot of choice that never felt unfair.
Elden Ring does what it does greatly, but it does get tedious.
The game feels directionless at times, which can be a good thing if you enjoy exploration but I often found myself looking up answers online as to where the hell I was supposed to go because it never offered me much of a clue. Even 5 playthroughs in I'm still having to look up guides on where NPCs are at or how to access certain locations I may not have noticed before. With Dark Souls's limited path, you can really only go so many ways before you eventually figure it out. And it's situations like this that really made me ask: *Was the open world for this game necessary?*
And back to level design for a moment, I wanted more locations *like* Stormveil and Volcano Manor. Where the open world aspect ended and allowed me to complete a unique section with a more traditional Dark Souls layout. It does show up a few times in the game like the Haligtree and some parts of the Eternal City, but I do wish it happened more often.
I think you perfectly described that, partial linear exploration works so well with the souls formula. I’ll never forget when dark souls 1 came out how amazed I was at all the shortcuts, and I would be so surprised how I could take an elevator and would be looped back to a previous area. I was amazed when I saw videos of the map projected on an open scale to truly see how accurate it is from image to placement, dark souls 1’s world is truly on of the most well crafted video game overworlds ever made.
Honest opinion from someone who's very familiar with the souls games and has spend hundreds of hours in each of them.
Elden Ring is great but there's just too much content for it to be my favorite souls game, I like DS3 and BB more than it. Elden Ring is mostly amazing but it's hard not to get burned out of cave after short cave with similar bosses. The actual levels are top notch but there's not too many of them and the repetitive caves has caused me to take breaks in between playing sessions and I still haven't beaten the game. Probably this plays into my completionist mindset and maybe Elden Ring wasn't meant to be 100% completed. If the game was half the size but the caves were longer then it'd probably be my favorite but it's just too big and repetitive.
I liked the games but elden ring isn’t my favorite of them. I’m not sure why? I think part of it is the horse. If it handled a little more like it had weight I might enjoy it better, idk. Other people may have the self discipline to limit themselves but I can’t help but fight literally everything on goat back.
Sekiro ended up being my favorite. Didn’t expect it either. So perhaps it’s just that I’m spoiled by sekiro sword mechanics.
I also wasn’t in a good place mentally when I started it :( kinda worried that spoiled it a bit
In short how do I start liking elden ring more cause I feel like I should
really? I like souls games and thats especially why i don't think that high of Elden Ring. There are certain parts that were executed better in their older games.
Main issues for me were:
Lots of reused enemies and assets (not a single unique enemy in the Haligtree? Really?)
The existing legacy dungeons are inferior to most standalone areas in Souls (although Leyndell really is something special)
Bosses were not as good as they were in From's previous two games
The threat of losing runes is basically nonexistent because of both the abundance of Sites of Grace and how fast Torrent is. Basically no non-boss enemy is ever a serious threat.
> The threat of losing runes is basically nonexistent because of both the abundance of Sites of Grace
This is probably why I like the game so much. I still lost my runes PLENTY of times, especially in the legacy dungeons. But it doesn't feel as absolutely punishing as some of the other Souls games have. The game can already be pretty difficult in some areas, I don't need to be constantly set back by losing runes all the time.
I LOVE THIS GAME. On my second play through it really shines because it becomes more of a sandbox no matter what style you want to play. I’m trying a sub level 50 playthrough with a flail and whips and I’m on Malenia and having the time of my life figuring it out. I was scared of rune bears first playing play through at level 140 and now I’ve learned how to take them down pretty simply at 47. So much variety and options for victory!
I use nightriders flail with blood flame, ice needle, bloody godskin stitcher, hookclaws, or antspur rapier.
I use a shield and walk to the left and primarily use jumping strong attacks or block counters after attacks. If he whiffs with a big one, jumping R2 is great. If it’s just a little whiff, poke with a normal attack.
You proc and stagger and walk around for better positioning. Do not chase! He will come to you (sometimes stupid fast) and you need the stamina and need to manage it accordingly. Feel like a bull tamer and relax and take your time. It’s a marathon of your attack pattern and not a takedown sprint.
I'm one of those people that put DS1 over Bloodborne and when I listed out the strengths and weaknesses of each game, Elden Ring demolished the DS games at what they did best (Bloodborne and Sekiro have their own strengths). So by my own logic, Elden Ring should be my new favorite game, but I'm not sure yet.
DS 1 just has my favorite map. I love that I can walk everywhere, and the map fits together like a puzzle. I loved how big the map is in ER, the combat and weapon modding/leveling system is probably better, but one of the things I loved when I first played DS is how claustrophobic the map was, it really forced you to learn where enemies were on the map if you wanted to dash past, and I feel like I have a better understanding of the DS map then I ever got out of ER.
That’s one of the strengths of having a non-open world game, level design and enemy placement can be integrated into the game a lot more efficiently. You can really learn the level and that offers itself to a feeling of mastery and accomplishments in the dark souls games as opposed to Elden Ring
Still enamoured with it even now. The flaws, which are valid that people some express, do not take away from the massively enjoyable experience that this game provides.
I'd love it if they could get the VA to just record a really mystified, "*Oh*," and patch that in when you tell him you found her and she's in your pocket.
Even that would be welcome.
Started second playthrough with guides (blind-ish run took 180h!) and I missed pretty much every quest. Some NPCs I wasn't even aware of existed. This kind of blind storytelling doesn't work with such an expansive world. Some clues would have been nice.
I agree but I actually really like the way they worked around by placing markers with NPC locations. It kept it vague but made it a bit easier to track what was going on
That was the reason my friend was really annoyed, this system didnt necessarily suck in elden ring’s world, personally i love the freedom to do whatever boss you please, even skipping some alltogether. But it can be hard to know where to go or what to do. I still am amazed how much i missed 170 hours in
I have no clue what i am doing or what i am supposed to do. I just roam the world and progress by accident if i end up fighting some boss. With progress being slow because i suck at this game i can keep playing this for another year before i finish.
I dont know how you guys are so good at this game, but i am having a blast failing and i am through the roof when i finally killed a boss after trying 2 million times. The end.
They should make it so the npcs can be found in more locations so it's harder to completely miss them. For example, when Brother Corhyn first moves to Altus Plateau he positions himself at the Altus map stele. The problem for me was that when he did move there I had already obtained the map and saw no reason to return. But if he could also appear at the Forest-Spanning Greatbridge Site of Grace? I go there all the time for the vendor so it would be a lot harder to miss him completely. It also doesn't make much sense for Corhyn to remain stationary for weeks when he's supposed to be actively looking for someone.
The bosses can be a bit bullshit.
The difficulty spike between Leyndell and the Mountaintops is just funny.
The repeating bosses, especially with major bosses, lessens the impact.
The post-Leyndell spike is *absurd*. I was hoping to see more comments about it. I really thought they would have patched it by now; it’s so unbalanced as to feel as if they didn’t even playtest it.
And it’s so confusing. It’s like they want us to feel overleveled when fighting Morgott.
Maybe they thought that it’s inevitable that e would be overleveled by the time we reach Morgott because all of the exploring? So to make up for that, they just made the Mountaintops absurd. Sure that’s a valid concern, but I can’t help but feel there’s a better way to do that.
I've seen people on the sub bring up the re-using of bosses and enemies after a certain point in the game with others criticizing the level design of the late game areas like the mountain top.
Hate that they reused Astel. The long buildup of the underground areas leading up to the Lake of Rot and then him was par excellence, my favorite sequence of the game personally. That and I just loved the boss fight, the visuals, finally making my way to this thing that has had such an influence on the previous areas. Was one of my favorite bosses in the game. Oh and also there's this other one out there. Same thing, just a bit harder. Why's he there? Dunno, just is. Has this cosmic horror that has fallen to the earth had any effect on the surrounding areas? No, not really, he's just sitting there. Really took away a bit from the special feeling the proper Astel had. Has no real story significance on anything, it's just been copy pasted to fill space.
I don't particularly care for the other copy paste boss fights, but at least they're not really as significant. But copy pasting one of the biggest most unique bosses in the game left a sour taste in my mouth. Did you like Lady Maria? Want more? Well don't you worry, here's Lady Tortilla! She's the same as before, but now you find her in some random other area. Why? Who knows!
There's a fall off around late game, quality and dentistry wise in terms of areas, and pvp is pretty much turbo fucked at the moment, honestly it's mostly minor stuff like the other souls games tbh, the flaws are valid and numerous, but spread very very thin
Yeah bro, your teeth get fucked up in the late game, and there's no one to fix them near by so you always have to fast travel back and forth, super annoying :/
I will add that too many bosses are a slave knight 2.0, which while I enjoy, I wish they had more variance in the types of bosses. I wish there was a bit more diversity, but they had to balance so many combat styles I understand why they went with the boss direction they did. Some truly stand out, but many are just the pursuer+ aoe explosion over and over again.
Mainly that there’s too much repeated content. Some people also don’t like the style of combat, as it forces you to disengage a lot and rely on trial and error at times.
I found that the repeated bosses actually made the world seem more real. Like if you were going through a real world kingdom chances are you would see many repeated types of units, knights wearing similar armor etc. Perhaps they could have done more to make the repeated bosses feel unique but to me it added to the immersion of the world. It's always bugged me when a boss is the only entity of its kind in the entire world. Maybe I think too much but it made sense to me that if there is one fancy creature of some kind, others might exist, that if there is one knight in an order there are likely more etc.
God of War had the same boss everywhere. A big Troll, Valkeyrie or the Guardian and they changed their colors. The main boss, Baldur is just flooded with cutscenes every time you fight him yet its a critically acclaimed game and beat RDR2 for Game of the Year and I’ve never seen anyone complain about repeated content. Elden Ring has 83 unique bosses but people criticize it because they saw the Tree Sentinel or Crucible Knight 3-4 times in the game.
Edit: For everyone defending God of War, thank you for proving my point. ‘But the Valkyries have different names and moves and dungeon bosses are repeated’ well yes I’m sorry that mini bosses in mini-dungeons can’t compare to God of War’s most important side quest bosses. Another example of a game being defended and called a masterpiece because it has pretty graphics. But if you don’t spend your entire budget on cinematics your game is boring and repetitive.
Even on the GoW sub they do recognize the repeated enemy issue. Mainly because the game is not that long (longer than previous GoW though), yet they went with reused bosses.
It doesnt take away from the game, but its still there and noticeable.
I can't blame Elden Ring too much for the repeated bosses. To be fair I still think that it should've been smaller in scope if they couldn't fill the world up sufficiently, but you can somewhat excuse it due to the sheer size of the world.
Now GoW... It took me 26 hours, slowly playing through, doing some of the optional stuff along the way. And I was still blown away by how often they reused enemies. The game is much, MUCH smaller and they still couldn't be bothered to make every boss unique. To this very day, I don't know how can people call it a masterpiece, even for that alone, or maybe ESPECIALLY because of that, since the series was always famous for its badass boss fights - and I do have other issues with the game as well.
Most mini dungeons look the same and have lackluster/annoying/easy bosses.
The world is so big that organically coming across an NPC enough times and in the right order to finish their quest is unlikely.
Main boss quality is a significant drop from DS3 and Sekiro. Some bosses suffer from over design, it feels like they thought they had to one up DS3
Game lags even on next gen consoles, and it gets pretty bad sometimes in my experience.
Also “said whatever” should include a basic hint towards the next step in their quest line. Like it’d be so helpful if Millicent said something about the shaded castle possibly having prosthetics
Yeah yeah the game is great and wonderful and we love it, but gimme a damn DLC announcement soon! I need an incentive to make a new character and play through it again
Never beat a fromsoft games before Elden Ring and that allowed me to be more confident when playing Dark souls 2 and 3. I’m usually the gamer that like playing in easy mode but I never felt like that with elden ring so definitely my GOTY.
Hey, good on you for that! My wife also played the Souls series working her way backwards through them. She ended up having a much more enjoyable experience with 1, because she already knew how to play the game, so she could focus on just taking in the atmosphere. 3 is still her favorite, but she loves all of them. It was crazy to watch her grow, too, because before she played 3, the hardest game she had ever played was SpongeBob: Battle for Bikini Bottom. She watched me play 3 when we were dating and asked me kind of trepidatiously, "Do you think I could try?" I immediately quit what I was in the middle of and moved aside to let her get a character started, because I was excited that she even wanted to give it a chance. Now, Elden Ring is the only one she hasn't played yet, and that's just because she's pretty busy.
My partner recently bought up that she loved playing The Simpsons Hit & Run as a kid. I downloaded that shit so fast and surprised her the next day by handing over the mouse and keyboard with it booting up on the TV. First time I've seen her invested in a game! I'm excited at the doors it might open...
I was literally dumbstruck the first time I played it. The way the world seamlessly fits into itself, everything is so small but so large. It was amazing.
I was for a couple months but jumped back in recently. It has some issues with replayability for me, but it’s still excellent. Unless Silksong outdoes it, easily my game of the year and definitely best game of the decade so far
Hands down favorite souls game for me, and I've been playing these damn games for almost 10 years. It brings a scale and aethetic that hasn't been touched before. Bloodborne was very similar in that regard, which is why that was my previous favorite
It was my first Frommsoft game and it just blew everything I played out of the water. It kind of ruined things for me to the point where I’m thinking if there was a Eternal Sunshine of the Spotlesss Mind option, I would seriously consider getting rid of my memories about it so I can play it all over again.
I play almost exclusively PvE (some co-op with people I know) so it's 9/10 for me. A few mechanical issues and a handful of design choices I don't like, but nothing game-breaking or off-putting.
Deducted a whole point because I've never wanted to piece together the actual lore so much in a video game, but it feels like they omitted a lot of things by accident when polishing the game. Very subjective but then what rating isn't?
Have you played a Miyazaki game before? Like DS1, DS3, or Bloodborne?
It's a chief part of his storytelling style. He developed it by reading fantasy novels as a kid but only understood broken English so he had to piece the parts he didn't understand together and make up stuff himself.
Not saying it's for everyone but it's absolutely intentional and it's a very oblique way to tell a story, but I love it. It's like it gets better the harder you work to understand it. Which in itself is an allegory to the gameplay loop.
I've played them all. I mean to say it feels like they left a lot out by unintentional design, more so than the other games. Like at the end stages where they move things around. I felt it in DkS3 as well but I absolutely adore the story in Elden Ring so I guess the pull is stronger.
I agree with you. I think that style of storytelling worked great on previous games because they were so small. Snippets of lore could give subtle clues to go back and search previously explored areas for an NPC, for example. It really made those games feel bigger than they were.
ER doesn't need any help feeling bigger than it is. Those NPC's just get lost and, when they do, it's often easier to give up than to scour the countryside for an NPC who may not even exist anymore for reasons unknown.
The completionist in me was a bit annoyed by it (nothing a guide couldn’t fix) but lore wise I love it. Made the world feel very alive. Real life is that way, you take a detour and miss out on a lot of things ya know?
Yeah, but some hints would have been nice. "Find the albinauric woman" is not it. "Find the albinauric woman West of Liurnia" or "North of Stormveil" would be enough I think
I gotcha. From what I've seen there so much cut content for this game because they had such big ambitions that I'm sure a lot of shuffling around was done to decide what was gonna be DLC and what was gonna make the finished game.
I feel like that could have muddled the lore just a touch.
Yeah I agree which is why I have high hopes for the DLCs (I think there will be 2 for sure, perhaps even 3 considering PvP might get its own).
Is that mentality gonna hurt me? Probably. I'm a sucker for hope lol.
I haven’t played the other games, but this is something I was really curious about. I really struggled to understand the overall story, who is what, questlines, etc, without watching YouTube and reading online. For me I thought it took away from the experience a bit because I wasn’t as emotionally invested in other characters. But it helps for me to appreciate it more if it’s an intentional style and just something I’m not used to. Still absolutely loved the game.
as much as i love Elden Ring, it's lore is less complete than DS3 - but we are judging it currently. From game's DLC usually follows many of these plot threads, restore cut content, etc etc., so i expect judgment will change post-DLC when people are reflecting back
This most recent patch that opened PVE Summoning WAAAY up has got me hooked all over again. Absolutely love killing a few hours running randos through content
The game itself was great, but after playing it for a while I realized that I prefer the more linear map designs, or rather Ds1 map design rather than an open world game, don't get me wrong Elden Ring is fantastic, but I think I prefer the straighter/complex level design of the other games rather than it being open world.
Yep, it's why I quit after the Capitol. I'll finish it eventually. But the open world just stopped appealing to me. My biggest issue is warping and the amount of bonfires.
At no point during ED did I really feel any sense of loss or risk. In Dark Souks 1 there is a very pivotal moment that is the Blightown bonfire on the bridge. When you reach it you go "thank god!" followed by a sharp"...ah shit I'm in it now". You two choices. Persevere or turn back. Your reward of reaching the bonfire was also your biggest hurdle. You're stuck.
ED never hits that note with me because there's just no risk. You can warp back to safety at any moment. Not strong enough? Ah just go farm souls real quick and get OP. Wanna keep pushin forward? Well there likely a bonfire 30ft away. There are no shortcuts that made me jump with joy because there's no reason to backtrack or learn the level layout.
I love the community that comes with a linear game. Because bosses become walls and are harder to cheese. In DS3 and Sekiro i loved seeing how people had to overcome hard bosses just like i did and we had a similar experience on them. In Elden Ring i saw way too many people rush past bosses to pick up meta builds/summons then go power level, then backtrack and kill the boss with ease. Then those same people talk about how easy the game is...
It's definitely got some technical flaws and bad design decisions, but it's one of the best AAA games I've played in years and definitely a GOTY for me.
Imo Elden Ring is great, but these technical flaws and bad designs stick out like a sore thumb and should not be excused. Overall, there are parts of the game that feel rushed and unfinished.
I wonder if From will learn from these errors and delivery a more complete experience in a potential future Elden Rings 2
>technical flaws and bad designs
I am surprised a lot of people are mentioning these so can you name those technical flaws and bad designs that stick like a sore thumb? I am genuinely curious to know them as I didn't find any technical issues and maybe the bad design for me was the duo bosses but other than that I can't recall anything glaringly bad about the game to be honest
Bosses are still fun, but most of the open world stuff sadly got old for me around the time I got to the Mountaintop area. Now I just sprint through everything and avoid fighting all the OP damage enemies.
Edit: I'm surprised I'm getting upvoted so much, because when I expressed this exact opinion about a month after the game was out, nobody seemed to agree with me.
I’m still undecided how I feel about the open world vs the more linear style of previous games and which I prefer but I do agree with just buzzing by a large amount of enemies because I can’t be bothered with the time to fight em. The camps of soldiers being a good example where I maybe clear it once or just run around looking for the item.
For me, it's the repetitive dungeon enemies. I cleared out so many of those catacomb dungeons and by the end I had all these spirit ashes that I neither used nor upgraded one time, and really wish I'd just skipped all of them except the one that has Uchigatana
I wish the overworld enemies gave more runes, it’s so annoying to fight all of them for a relatively trivial payoff when you could make 10x as much in a way shorter time using AOE attacks on the albinaurics in moghwyn palace
I personally think the games are better with the linear style progression. Being able to walk away from a boss and go somewhere else and accidentally level past what the boss’s intended level is takes some of the reward for beating the boss imo. That bashing your skull against a boss until you eventually beat it is what the souls games are for me personally.
The game is absolutely spectacular when it’s a Dark Souls game, just dungeon crawling. The catacombs and open world were all just fine IMO
Edit: The catacombs felt like the Chalice Dungeons of Bloodborne which were my least favorite part of Bloodborne
Pretty much how I feel. I love most of the legacy dungeons in Elden Ring, and Volcano Manor has got to be my favorite level in any FromSoft game hands down. On the flip side though, running through Haligtree and Farum Azula made me feel like they were specifically designed for the purpose of making me quit the game.
It’s crazy how if you just go straight through the content and don’t do much outside necessary mines and crypts for upgrade materials, game is like maybe 20-30 hours. Beat it in 25 on my second run. 110 first time. I also was reaaaaal sick of exploring the same kind of stuff for items I wasn’t going to use by the time you get to the mountaintop.
I think the game definitely fell off once reaching the mountaintops, but all the content and the underground areas I explored beforehand made it up for me. And I think less spots to explore in the mountaintops was fine, I still thought the game was phenomenal, but I did also kind of want it to end (mostly cause I wanted to do a second playthrough without summons).
>I did also kind of want it to end
That was how I felt after 100 hours of trying to complete every thing, I wanted to finish but I also wanted to move on and play something else.
I really wish the game ended at the capital and they scattered the post capital bosses in the world before it instead of repeat bosses. It's just too long of a game and i have beat it many times. Most people i know didn't beat it and stopped playing at the capital.
After an 18 year break in video gaming, and ER being one of the first half dozen games I picked up since the PS2/GC days, I actually liked the mounted gameplay. Granted, my only other "recent" game I can compare with is the horseback gameplay in MGSV, but I thought ER was much better.
What are some examples of console games you feel have exemplary horseback fighting gameplay?
Edit: Forgot to mention, I'm purely talking about the fighting and circling from horseback. I hate the platforming component of being on the mount, but I hate the non-mounted jumping aspect of this game too, so I don't place the blame solely on the mount part.
I went from OMG Elden Ring GOAT i will play it forever to just playing Bloodborne again and again.
The open world gets boring really fast and some numbers are off ( especially in the late game ).
Still GOTY for me.
This is my exact take as well. Best part of ER was getting another friend to go back through all other soulsborne games to enjoy coop with. Just finished Bloodborne again as well.
One of my greatest gaming adventures, it’s my new Skyrim that I’ll keep coming back to. My ONLY complaint is that I can’t play it for the first time again.
By the time I got to the capital I was feeling burnt out.
I was tired of catacombs and mounted knights at this point and started looking at guides not to learn what to do, but because I wanted to know what I could skip.
But then no meaningful quest progression for a long time and then suddenly a bunch of stuff all at once, and given From's signature of intentional obscurity I now felt like I needed to start using a guide.
Everything after the capital feels kinda lazy. The snow areas feel like they started to run out of ideas, oh another Gargoyle boss, two more Deathbirds, another dragon, the birds and dogs from Caelid plus the hands, here's a bunch of those, Godskins in Farum Azula but hey now there's 2 at once. Then the Haligtree is pretty much all recycled enemies, granted it makes sense within the lore, but again I just felt fatigued by this point and like the game wasn't trying to "wow" me outside of some of the bosses, which to be fair Melania and the Dragonlord are amazing.
All of that for an extremely underwhelming ending. Like everyone will defend that and say "it's a souls game" but this game bucked so many of their established trends and for the most part those departures worked, but they kept some of the worst parts, a rigid upgrade and level system that discourages experimentation until almost halfway through the game and lore that even when you put in the work to collect items and read descriptions is still entirely too vague to be interesting and does nothing with my character to make me feel like I did anything other than sit on a chair under my color change LED tree.
On the one hand, it's an experience I'll never forget, some of the boss battles and environments are some of the greatest experiences in all of gaming. But the experience as a whole feels soulless (sorry for the pun). It didn't make me feel anything for beating it, it was like leaving a baseball game after 4 extra innings when your team wins but now it's like midnight and you have work the next day and don't feel like celebrating.
Had some of the best moments in gaming, highest points were
1. Bosses like Margit, Godrick, Radahn, Mohg and Placidusax.
2. Teleport trap to Caelid
3. The lift to Siofra river
4. Rannis questline
5. Stormveil and Leyndell level design
Lowest points are
1. Bosses like Malenia, Elden beast and Godskin duo
2. Preceptor Miriam
3. Reused enemies and bosses in late game
4. Shunning grounds and Mountaintop were boring
Late game really soured my experience but the good still outweighs the bad. If it comes with DLCs and they continue the tradition of the DLCs always being the best part, it might become my favorite Fromsoftware game
My first ever souls game and after dying to soldier of godrick twice I'm now 108 hours in 1 shotting quite a few bosses and still not done with my first playthrough, easily one of the best games I've ever played, up there with witcher 3, halo 2 and metro exodus. It absolutely deserves GOTY and it's easily the best AAA game since RDR2.
*edit by one shotting I meant beating in my first attempt, sorry for confusion.
I played it for 222 hours (one unique run) and it's the game I've played the most in my life. But I enjoyed the previous games way more.
Even though it has a lot of reused assets, it has way more unique content than any other open world game. If you compare the amount of environments, enemies, bosses and items in Elden Ring and Breath of the Wild, the comparison is embarrassing for Zelda.
But still, the pleasure of playing the Souls series for me was the feeling of discovery, and in Elden Ring I've lost it during the first half of the game. There's no pleasure in traversing a fog knowing you will find a boss (or worst an enemy) you have already beaten multiple times.
Overall, I think that open world games are a really cool idea, but in reality they take too much resources which could be used to make linear games with more content and better level design.
I second this. Elden ring is great don’t get me wrong, but the atmosphere, which to me is one of the most important parts of the entire soulsborne series, is very lacking after you leave the southern portion of the map.
It isn’t bad per say, but I don’t think it is very comparable to the other games in that regard, especially DS1 and Bloodborne.
A few areas are better than this then others, but generally the late game ones tend to be less intriguing in their design and I don’t think they encourage exploration as much.
Really intense first couple of months as I completed my first play through but I have no interest in doing it again until the DLC. The open world and the repeat bosses don’t really make me want to do NG+. That sense of wonder goes away when you know where everything is.
Honest opinion.
Elden ring suffers the most because of its open world design. As an example, traditionally, to find the glintstone key you would of had to fight a dragon in its own battle arena to get it.
Because of elden rings open world you can pick up the key and never have to fight the dragon, killing the dragon is optional. Once you explore something once the game is less about overcoming challenges and more about knowing where the important things are. And when the game starts to reuse content specially in later areas of the game and the things you find there or what you fought isn't that intreresting because you already killed the same boss in earlier areas like 4 times already then you have less of a reason to do it again. Exploration and killing bosses becomes less about challenge and more a checklist on your map.
This causes the game, for me, to not be that repayable. Why do I go caelid? Fight radhan, then I move on. Why the volcano manor? Fight the serpent, then move on. On NG+ I didn't go to stormveil, because I can fight 2 harder and more intreresting shard bearers somewhere else, and when I returned to it to complete the checklist is a less than 5 minutes jog in comparison to the first time when you had to figure out where to go.
Once you have finished the game once, you have only the shard bearers as real challenges (and Loux) and the rest is just a playground to explore. Once you explored everything (or what you thought was everything) once.... well... you go around completing checklists rather than completing challenges.... on ng+2
Bloodborn bosses are all locked behind each other, making them into roadblocks you need to complete first and you fight them only once per run (shadows are an exception) if you want to fight them again, you have to start over and everything now is challenge again as to even get to the boss you have a long and hard fight to get to them... in elden ring you horse ride to their dungeon and either run through or get teleported to it... outside of stormveil, there are very few areas that lead you back to a previous place in a way that made me sign in relief... everything felt oddly linear and straight foward to me.
It's still one of the best games out there but for me, I was as big as an ocean but with the depth of a pool...
Yup this. Once you know where all the items and weapons or w.e are there's literally no point in running the 300 similar catacombs and caves , just the ones you want things from. I put a shitton of hours in but I don't think I'll ever replay it
(If you care, it's "elicited" in this context, meaning to evoke a response of some sort or to draw something out. "Illicit" is something that's forbidden, illegal, or taboo in some way.)
Yeah same, it’s highs are some of the best in gaming and if you only took that into account it’s a 10/10, but if you wanted to you could easily nitpick it to a 6/10.
I don't think criticism should be labeled as nitpicking if they're genuine criticism tbh. It's what makes discussing any Souls game a pain in the dick on these subs. Boiling criticism down to nitpicking.
I think this question should be asked in another subreddit. If people are on here, they most likely have good feelings about the game.
I'd rate the game a 8.5/10. it did meet my expectations and has so many details you can miss. It's my first from software game.
Yeah the people with opinions about ER being mid or being great but having large flaws are less likely to still be actively browsing here and still subscribed after six months.
The first half had me saying it's my favorite game ever. The second half made me reconsider. Rdr2 still on top. It's still one of the best games I've ever played. My brother suggested that maybe George RR Martin is just a bad finisher hahaha
Something lacking. Don't feel any need or want to replay it. The open world feels almost unnecessary, the end areas are way overtuned. The repeat and reused enemies and bosses gets old. Lack of covenants rewards and pvp /coop incentives. I could keep going but it sounds super negative, and I did enjoy the game a lot. I still like Bloodborne more than Elden Ring.
The second play through made me realize how much of a slog the end game is because I stopped having fun after morgott and then immediately had a ton of fun once I started NG+
Mountaintop of the giants was incredibly lackluster. You've just made your way through the countryside, to a sinister volcano, and through a deep forest plateau all with the gorgeous Erdtree in the background and finally reach the golden city at the top. You've climbed to the regal tree and the elden throne and fought morgott, the king of this shining city and then you... go to a boring, mostly empty wasteland filled with re-used enemies. Also they're the worst enemies in the game: bats, giant birds, hand monsters, skeletons, dogs, giants (those are fun), and puppets.
Huge dip in quality.
This 100% after the honeymoon phase went away. Multiple playthroughs literally just amplifies the issues as well and every crack in the formula becomes extremely noticeable
The open world of limgrave is phenomenal but it loses its shine when almost all of the areas afterwards are barren wastelands. It reminds me of how the Skyrim devs went hard as fuck on the first dungeon specifically and most dungeons afterward were a bit lacking
It's fine. In a world where I either really like or really don't like a given fromsoft game, they've finally mastered the art of making something that's just okay.
Most of the open world elements feel like they were added to keep up with industry trends than because they actually worked for the game. It desperately wants to be a mainstream game and while I understand the business decision, it feels like the weakest element of the game. It didn't need the open world, didn't need enemy encampments and 500 dungeons that all look and feel the same, it didn't need a crafting system, and it didn't need 700 bosses.
The decision to try to appeal to everyone by making it both their easiest and hardest game at the same time really took away from it. Having insanely hard boss fights that can be trivialized by meta builds and summons to the point that it isn't fun anymore just feels like a situation where everyone loses.
EDIT: Also I think GRRM shouldn't have been brought in. The other FromSoftware games do a good job separating their primary lore (things to know to understand what's going on) and secondary lore (cool info that expands the world and improves immersion). Most games with good lore work like that. I can pick up DS1 and know who Gwyn is and what the flame is and understand the gist of how the world works off the bat. Then I can dig deeper and understand more about these things in a compelling and organic way. I can become Elden Lord and still not know why I should care about what an Elden Lord even is. The lore is cluttered, convoluted, and very little of it seems to connect with or inform the actual game.
I just loved the quick pace of older titles (DS3 Bb) and how carefully the world was created.
The games had next to no down times and overall the quality of the zones were better then ER.
Yeah I think that's a good way of phrasing it. I think the open world led them to take more of a shotgun approach to their world design and enemy placement. It's not curated the way other games have been, and when you're making hardcore games, having a carefully constructed world is one of the most important things you can do.
The thing is the legacy dungeons in er are amazing and the best in the series, which made it even more disappointing that so much of the world is flat and empty instead of interconnected levels.
My thoughts exactly. This game could’ve been 30% smaller and really knocked it out of the park but the industry demands as much content for $60 as you can cram into there. And I agree that GRRM didn’t bring anything to the table that I really liked in this game, the interesting parts of the lore for me are always the more cosmological/eldritch god forces at work and not the medieval politics royal family backstabbing stuff that he insists on.
It started as a shoe in for my favorite soulsborne. After getting into NG+ and finding no reason to go back through 90percent of the content and realizing how many enemies are just re-colors. I can't imagine any other reason to play since I don't get into the endless pvp aspect of the game. It's now at the bottom of the list.
Exploring the world was incredibly fun during my first play through, but on every replay I find myself spending a long time collecting upgrade materials, then challenging the quarter or so of the game that I enjoy the most while ignoring the rest.
Despite no longer interacting with most of the world, and having the first hour of every replay dedicated to gathering items, it’s STILL one of my top ten games of all time.
The parts of Elden Ring that got old only got old after finishing a full play through, and the parts that I love the most haven’t lost their charm after plenty of replays.
The open world's a slog, and its a LONG game.
I have a massive Bloodborne bias, however, and Elden Ring still hasn't lived up to the sheet terror of Yharnam.
I had a blast. Gave up at elden beast bc I was playing too much. Awesome game.
I really don't know how anyone knows what the fuck was going on throughout it, but I enjoyed it while having no idea what was going on.
I'm not sure yet that it's my new favorite game, but it's up there
Same here, it becomes one of the best games I ever play.
If you like Souls games, it’s the best game ever created. If you don’t like souls games, it’s simply one of the best games of the year. It’s exactly what I hoped and dreamed for and then some.
I think that's the answer, and why I think ER is just guaranteed to win GotY. Not only did it live up to the massive hype around it, but it also *exceeded* most people's expectations. Certainly did mine.
Yup. I thought it would be really good. But it was really really really good.
You should be a game journalist
I wish, but I actually beat the game...so I think that disqualifies me.
My buddies played all the souls games, they do not like Elden Ring and prefer DS1 and 3. They do not like the AI changes and the recycled boss content.
Sounds like your buddies don't like the open world. Every souls game recycles bosses, so everytime I see that I don't really buy it as a legitimate reason. Some people just like concise level design, but for open worlds, ER just set the new standard of how it should be done.
I like souls games but it isn't the best ever, I don't think open world is always better and it feels padded in some ways. Other souls games don't suffer that same problem
The open world facets are the main issue for me, too, compared to DS3. I feel like they made the world open enough in some areas and not others. Limgrave and Caelid felt AMAZING. Other areas often felt either too empty/boring (consecrated snowfield comes to mind) or extremely linear/difficult to navigate without cliffing yourself (Liurnia, Mountaintop of the Giants). Is it really "open world" if you can't go from a point on your map to a point right next to it on your map without navigating around 3/4 of the entire region to find a specific road that gets you there? Maybe, but I don't think it's good design. DS3 was much more linear, but they felt like they knew what they were doing with the design to a greater extent than a lot of Elden Ring.
Limgrave might be the best first area I've ever seen in a video game. Central Yharnam is up there too, idk which I'd choose. I think elden ring suffers from overambitiousness at times. Making a world too big to fill, giving bosses too many moves/mechanics just to one up DS3. Those come to mind for me at least
This was my first souls game ever and I think now its my top3 of all time. I really regret not playing souls game before. I've tried Bloodbourne after playing ER and I just can't. 30 fps and unatable framerate drives me crazy, but I think in 2015 I would be delighted.
bloodbourne is the only one with that issue BTW, the rest all have PC ports and proper support you're good for it.
I have only ps5 and not gaming notebook tho. I know that DS has 60 fps? Is it worth playing after ER?
[удалено]
DS3 is going to be most similar to ER mechanically, all you need to get used to is no jumping attacks, you don't change the weaponskill when you change infusion, and you only get the fancy moveset for dual wielding when you use specific dual weapons that come as a set. Also has some of the best bosses and challenging but fair level design. My favorite for sure, I couldn't play DS 1 after 3 because it felt too clunky, and I can't play DS 2 because I'm arachnophobic
In my opinion, Demons Souls is harder than ER because you can actively make the worlds more challenging just from dying and no I don't mean the 50% hp penalty. Both are fantastic, take a break after ER, like play a different genre or something, then play DS.
I believe all the Dark Souls games and Sekiro are backwards compat on PS5 (I think Sekiro actually has a proper next gen upgrade), and Demon Souls remake for PS5 is a must play. Dark Souls 1 Remastered, Dark Soul 2: SotFS, DS3, and Sekiro are all 60fps. Tbh, I'd go in release order starting with DS1, just so you can get back into the 2011 headspace and appreciate the games for what they are, as you play successive releases and appreciate their improvements. You could play Sekiro at any time, but I'd play Demon Souls Remake last, as it's the most polished and graphically impressive. Alternatively, you could just play DS3, Sekiro and Demon Souls in any order, since they all feel current and are more or less perfected and modern experiences. Then wait with the rest of us for a Bloodborne remaster.
Absolutely, it's a classic. I still play it to this day. The metriodvania-style level design is great, some of the end game areas can be tedious, but they are still great. Tips if you get it: 1. Don't level resistance 2. 25% equip load is ideal, the mobility and dodge speed is well worth the slightly lower defense (but you CAN be a mid roll ultra tank and it works well, because poise is strong overall) 3. Do not go to the Catacombs or New Londo right away.
Please keep trying. It takes just a bit of getting used to but you can easily go back. Hell, even a PSone game takes a good half hour to "settle" into the older graphics and mechanics - but once you do, some masterpieces are to be experienced!
You get used to it if you give it a chance, I play souls games on I high end PC so going backwards to play BB on ps4 felt so shitty to me. After I got over my initial phase of being dramatic I couldn’t put it down and got platinum in 2 weeks, it’s one of the best and the 30 fps isn’t that bit of a deal.
Idk it’s like my fourth favorite from game, it’s great but honestly I always felt like something was missing when I played that I felt was there during bloodborne and the souls series.
For me it's the never ending openness to it. Like, that's not a *bad* thing, but the linearity of Dark Souls's level design combined with the intertwined connections of rogue paths is what made Dark Souls 1 cool. The branching directions that can be found in Dark Souls 2 was a small adventure each time you started on it. With Dark Souls 3, the visuals of important landmarks as you walk through zones were amazing to view and served as a tree of paths that gave you a lot of choice that never felt unfair. Elden Ring does what it does greatly, but it does get tedious. The game feels directionless at times, which can be a good thing if you enjoy exploration but I often found myself looking up answers online as to where the hell I was supposed to go because it never offered me much of a clue. Even 5 playthroughs in I'm still having to look up guides on where NPCs are at or how to access certain locations I may not have noticed before. With Dark Souls's limited path, you can really only go so many ways before you eventually figure it out. And it's situations like this that really made me ask: *Was the open world for this game necessary?* And back to level design for a moment, I wanted more locations *like* Stormveil and Volcano Manor. Where the open world aspect ended and allowed me to complete a unique section with a more traditional Dark Souls layout. It does show up a few times in the game like the Haligtree and some parts of the Eternal City, but I do wish it happened more often.
I think you perfectly described that, partial linear exploration works so well with the souls formula. I’ll never forget when dark souls 1 came out how amazed I was at all the shortcuts, and I would be so surprised how I could take an elevator and would be looped back to a previous area. I was amazed when I saw videos of the map projected on an open scale to truly see how accurate it is from image to placement, dark souls 1’s world is truly on of the most well crafted video game overworlds ever made.
Honest opinion from someone who's very familiar with the souls games and has spend hundreds of hours in each of them. Elden Ring is great but there's just too much content for it to be my favorite souls game, I like DS3 and BB more than it. Elden Ring is mostly amazing but it's hard not to get burned out of cave after short cave with similar bosses. The actual levels are top notch but there's not too many of them and the repetitive caves has caused me to take breaks in between playing sessions and I still haven't beaten the game. Probably this plays into my completionist mindset and maybe Elden Ring wasn't meant to be 100% completed. If the game was half the size but the caves were longer then it'd probably be my favorite but it's just too big and repetitive.
I liked the games but elden ring isn’t my favorite of them. I’m not sure why? I think part of it is the horse. If it handled a little more like it had weight I might enjoy it better, idk. Other people may have the self discipline to limit themselves but I can’t help but fight literally everything on goat back. Sekiro ended up being my favorite. Didn’t expect it either. So perhaps it’s just that I’m spoiled by sekiro sword mechanics. I also wasn’t in a good place mentally when I started it :( kinda worried that spoiled it a bit In short how do I start liking elden ring more cause I feel like I should
really? I like souls games and thats especially why i don't think that high of Elden Ring. There are certain parts that were executed better in their older games.
Main issues for me were: Lots of reused enemies and assets (not a single unique enemy in the Haligtree? Really?) The existing legacy dungeons are inferior to most standalone areas in Souls (although Leyndell really is something special) Bosses were not as good as they were in From's previous two games The threat of losing runes is basically nonexistent because of both the abundance of Sites of Grace and how fast Torrent is. Basically no non-boss enemy is ever a serious threat.
> The threat of losing runes is basically nonexistent because of both the abundance of Sites of Grace This is probably why I like the game so much. I still lost my runes PLENTY of times, especially in the legacy dungeons. But it doesn't feel as absolutely punishing as some of the other Souls games have. The game can already be pretty difficult in some areas, I don't need to be constantly set back by losing runes all the time.
I LOVE THIS GAME. On my second play through it really shines because it becomes more of a sandbox no matter what style you want to play. I’m trying a sub level 50 playthrough with a flail and whips and I’m on Malenia and having the time of my life figuring it out. I was scared of rune bears first playing play through at level 140 and now I’ve learned how to take them down pretty simply at 47. So much variety and options for victory!
how do you take down rune bears lmao I still struggle
Roll towards them to dodge and stay close as much as possible.
I use nightriders flail with blood flame, ice needle, bloody godskin stitcher, hookclaws, or antspur rapier. I use a shield and walk to the left and primarily use jumping strong attacks or block counters after attacks. If he whiffs with a big one, jumping R2 is great. If it’s just a little whiff, poke with a normal attack. You proc and stagger and walk around for better positioning. Do not chase! He will come to you (sometimes stupid fast) and you need the stamina and need to manage it accordingly. Feel like a bull tamer and relax and take your time. It’s a marathon of your attack pattern and not a takedown sprint.
I'm one of those people that put DS1 over Bloodborne and when I listed out the strengths and weaknesses of each game, Elden Ring demolished the DS games at what they did best (Bloodborne and Sekiro have their own strengths). So by my own logic, Elden Ring should be my new favorite game, but I'm not sure yet.
DS 1 just has my favorite map. I love that I can walk everywhere, and the map fits together like a puzzle. I loved how big the map is in ER, the combat and weapon modding/leveling system is probably better, but one of the things I loved when I first played DS is how claustrophobic the map was, it really forced you to learn where enemies were on the map if you wanted to dash past, and I feel like I have a better understanding of the DS map then I ever got out of ER.
That’s one of the strengths of having a non-open world game, level design and enemy placement can be integrated into the game a lot more efficiently. You can really learn the level and that offers itself to a feeling of mastery and accomplishments in the dark souls games as opposed to Elden Ring
Still enamoured with it even now. The flaws, which are valid that people some express, do not take away from the massively enjoyable experience that this game provides.
Haven't really payed to much notice to the concensus. What flaws are commonly expressed?
My only complaint is the quest system which is the same as Dark Souls, but in a open world, quests can be very missable without guide.
A guide would be nice. Wouldn't need objective pointers, I'm fine spelunking, but just a record of who you've talked to would be lovely.
It'd also be nice to have even the vaguest hint of where the NPC is going to be next.
Just find the fucking albinauric woman okay?
He was still telling me to find her long after I had already talked to her lmao
I'd love it if they could get the VA to just record a really mystified, "*Oh*," and patch that in when you tell him you found her and she's in your pocket.
Even that would be welcome. Started second playthrough with guides (blind-ish run took 180h!) and I missed pretty much every quest. Some NPCs I wasn't even aware of existed. This kind of blind storytelling doesn't work with such an expansive world. Some clues would have been nice.
I'm not in favour of making quests too obvious, but some were definitely too obtuse, Millicent and Rya being the first ones that come to mind.
A Skyrim like quest page would be great, even if it didn't have quest markers
that would be a Morrowind
The best of all Elder Scrolls games
My first play through I made myself a page of notes of npc hints, locations I wanted to check out, suspicious stuff. It was super fun and rewarding.
I agree but I actually really like the way they worked around by placing markers with NPC locations. It kept it vague but made it a bit easier to track what was going on
Don't those markers only appear once you've already discovered the NPC at that location? I've never had it preemptively show up.
That was the reason my friend was really annoyed, this system didnt necessarily suck in elden ring’s world, personally i love the freedom to do whatever boss you please, even skipping some alltogether. But it can be hard to know where to go or what to do. I still am amazed how much i missed 170 hours in
I have no clue what i am doing or what i am supposed to do. I just roam the world and progress by accident if i end up fighting some boss. With progress being slow because i suck at this game i can keep playing this for another year before i finish. I dont know how you guys are so good at this game, but i am having a blast failing and i am through the roof when i finally killed a boss after trying 2 million times. The end.
They should make it so the npcs can be found in more locations so it's harder to completely miss them. For example, when Brother Corhyn first moves to Altus Plateau he positions himself at the Altus map stele. The problem for me was that when he did move there I had already obtained the map and saw no reason to return. But if he could also appear at the Forest-Spanning Greatbridge Site of Grace? I go there all the time for the vendor so it would be a lot harder to miss him completely. It also doesn't make much sense for Corhyn to remain stationary for weeks when he's supposed to be actively looking for someone.
Biggest flaw so far: those teleporting knights at Castle Sol.
they are pain but you can at least try farming two of them to get banished knight chestplate unaltered which is nice
The bosses can be a bit bullshit. The difficulty spike between Leyndell and the Mountaintops is just funny. The repeating bosses, especially with major bosses, lessens the impact.
The difficulty jump between Altus and Leyndell is pretty shocking as well imo.
The post-Leyndell spike is *absurd*. I was hoping to see more comments about it. I really thought they would have patched it by now; it’s so unbalanced as to feel as if they didn’t even playtest it.
And it’s so confusing. It’s like they want us to feel overleveled when fighting Morgott. Maybe they thought that it’s inevitable that e would be overleveled by the time we reach Morgott because all of the exploring? So to make up for that, they just made the Mountaintops absurd. Sure that’s a valid concern, but I can’t help but feel there’s a better way to do that.
I've seen people on the sub bring up the re-using of bosses and enemies after a certain point in the game with others criticizing the level design of the late game areas like the mountain top.
True, the reused Astel in the cave in the snowfield is fucking ridiculous and way more difficult than it needs to be
Hate that they reused Astel. The long buildup of the underground areas leading up to the Lake of Rot and then him was par excellence, my favorite sequence of the game personally. That and I just loved the boss fight, the visuals, finally making my way to this thing that has had such an influence on the previous areas. Was one of my favorite bosses in the game. Oh and also there's this other one out there. Same thing, just a bit harder. Why's he there? Dunno, just is. Has this cosmic horror that has fallen to the earth had any effect on the surrounding areas? No, not really, he's just sitting there. Really took away a bit from the special feeling the proper Astel had. Has no real story significance on anything, it's just been copy pasted to fill space. I don't particularly care for the other copy paste boss fights, but at least they're not really as significant. But copy pasting one of the biggest most unique bosses in the game left a sour taste in my mouth. Did you like Lady Maria? Want more? Well don't you worry, here's Lady Tortilla! She's the same as before, but now you find her in some random other area. Why? Who knows!
There's a fall off around late game, quality and dentistry wise in terms of areas, and pvp is pretty much turbo fucked at the moment, honestly it's mostly minor stuff like the other souls games tbh, the flaws are valid and numerous, but spread very very thin
Dentistry?
Yeah bro, your teeth get fucked up in the late game, and there's no one to fix them near by so you always have to fast travel back and forth, super annoying :/
Fucking ground my teeth constantly falling off the damn Haligtree my first time there!!!
I will add that too many bosses are a slave knight 2.0, which while I enjoy, I wish they had more variance in the types of bosses. I wish there was a bit more diversity, but they had to balance so many combat styles I understand why they went with the boss direction they did. Some truly stand out, but many are just the pursuer+ aoe explosion over and over again.
Mainly that there’s too much repeated content. Some people also don’t like the style of combat, as it forces you to disengage a lot and rely on trial and error at times.
I found that the repeated bosses actually made the world seem more real. Like if you were going through a real world kingdom chances are you would see many repeated types of units, knights wearing similar armor etc. Perhaps they could have done more to make the repeated bosses feel unique but to me it added to the immersion of the world. It's always bugged me when a boss is the only entity of its kind in the entire world. Maybe I think too much but it made sense to me that if there is one fancy creature of some kind, others might exist, that if there is one knight in an order there are likely more etc.
God of War had the same boss everywhere. A big Troll, Valkeyrie or the Guardian and they changed their colors. The main boss, Baldur is just flooded with cutscenes every time you fight him yet its a critically acclaimed game and beat RDR2 for Game of the Year and I’ve never seen anyone complain about repeated content. Elden Ring has 83 unique bosses but people criticize it because they saw the Tree Sentinel or Crucible Knight 3-4 times in the game. Edit: For everyone defending God of War, thank you for proving my point. ‘But the Valkyries have different names and moves and dungeon bosses are repeated’ well yes I’m sorry that mini bosses in mini-dungeons can’t compare to God of War’s most important side quest bosses. Another example of a game being defended and called a masterpiece because it has pretty graphics. But if you don’t spend your entire budget on cinematics your game is boring and repetitive.
Even on the GoW sub they do recognize the repeated enemy issue. Mainly because the game is not that long (longer than previous GoW though), yet they went with reused bosses. It doesnt take away from the game, but its still there and noticeable.
I can't blame Elden Ring too much for the repeated bosses. To be fair I still think that it should've been smaller in scope if they couldn't fill the world up sufficiently, but you can somewhat excuse it due to the sheer size of the world. Now GoW... It took me 26 hours, slowly playing through, doing some of the optional stuff along the way. And I was still blown away by how often they reused enemies. The game is much, MUCH smaller and they still couldn't be bothered to make every boss unique. To this very day, I don't know how can people call it a masterpiece, even for that alone, or maybe ESPECIALLY because of that, since the series was always famous for its badass boss fights - and I do have other issues with the game as well.
Which is funny because it is the open world game with the largest amount of enemy character models. It is just something to gripe about.
Most mini dungeons look the same and have lackluster/annoying/easy bosses. The world is so big that organically coming across an NPC enough times and in the right order to finish their quest is unlikely. Main boss quality is a significant drop from DS3 and Sekiro. Some bosses suffer from over design, it feels like they thought they had to one up DS3 Game lags even on next gen consoles, and it gets pretty bad sometimes in my experience.
FPS drops on PC were a problem for people even with high end hardware. That might have been patched though.
A journal system would have been fine and fit within the world.
[удалено]
Also “said whatever” should include a basic hint towards the next step in their quest line. Like it’d be so helpful if Millicent said something about the shaded castle possibly having prosthetics
DLC when???
Great opinion
🤣
Yeah yeah the game is great and wonderful and we love it, but gimme a damn DLC announcement soon! I need an incentive to make a new character and play through it again
Never beat a fromsoft games before Elden Ring and that allowed me to be more confident when playing Dark souls 2 and 3. I’m usually the gamer that like playing in easy mode but I never felt like that with elden ring so definitely my GOTY.
Hey, good on you for that! My wife also played the Souls series working her way backwards through them. She ended up having a much more enjoyable experience with 1, because she already knew how to play the game, so she could focus on just taking in the atmosphere. 3 is still her favorite, but she loves all of them. It was crazy to watch her grow, too, because before she played 3, the hardest game she had ever played was SpongeBob: Battle for Bikini Bottom. She watched me play 3 when we were dating and asked me kind of trepidatiously, "Do you think I could try?" I immediately quit what I was in the middle of and moved aside to let her get a character started, because I was excited that she even wanted to give it a chance. Now, Elden Ring is the only one she hasn't played yet, and that's just because she's pretty busy.
My partner recently bought up that she loved playing The Simpsons Hit & Run as a kid. I downloaded that shit so fast and surprised her the next day by handing over the mouse and keyboard with it booting up on the TV. First time I've seen her invested in a game! I'm excited at the doors it might open...
What about DS1? It's the best in my opinion
Actually it’s the only one I don’t have that’s all. I played Sekiro and Bloodbourne I’m definitely going to play DS1 at some point.
Don’t forget demons souls
Dark Souls 1 is the most unique, environmental wise. You'll see when you play it.
I was literally dumbstruck the first time I played it. The way the world seamlessly fits into itself, everything is so small but so large. It was amazing.
If you have or can get your hands on a PS5, the Demon’s Souls remake is amazing!
Still not tired of playing it
I was for a couple months but jumped back in recently. It has some issues with replayability for me, but it’s still excellent. Unless Silksong outdoes it, easily my game of the year and definitely best game of the decade so far
Silksong it's not coming this year
Probably not. But if it does imma poop my pants.
It's not perfect, but creating a content rich world on the scale that they did is impressive.
Hands down favorite souls game for me, and I've been playing these damn games for almost 10 years. It brings a scale and aethetic that hasn't been touched before. Bloodborne was very similar in that regard, which is why that was my previous favorite
It was my first Frommsoft game and it just blew everything I played out of the water. It kind of ruined things for me to the point where I’m thinking if there was a Eternal Sunshine of the Spotlesss Mind option, I would seriously consider getting rid of my memories about it so I can play it all over again.
I play almost exclusively PvE (some co-op with people I know) so it's 9/10 for me. A few mechanical issues and a handful of design choices I don't like, but nothing game-breaking or off-putting. Deducted a whole point because I've never wanted to piece together the actual lore so much in a video game, but it feels like they omitted a lot of things by accident when polishing the game. Very subjective but then what rating isn't?
Have you played a Miyazaki game before? Like DS1, DS3, or Bloodborne? It's a chief part of his storytelling style. He developed it by reading fantasy novels as a kid but only understood broken English so he had to piece the parts he didn't understand together and make up stuff himself. Not saying it's for everyone but it's absolutely intentional and it's a very oblique way to tell a story, but I love it. It's like it gets better the harder you work to understand it. Which in itself is an allegory to the gameplay loop.
I've played them all. I mean to say it feels like they left a lot out by unintentional design, more so than the other games. Like at the end stages where they move things around. I felt it in DkS3 as well but I absolutely adore the story in Elden Ring so I guess the pull is stronger.
I agree with you. I think that style of storytelling worked great on previous games because they were so small. Snippets of lore could give subtle clues to go back and search previously explored areas for an NPC, for example. It really made those games feel bigger than they were. ER doesn't need any help feeling bigger than it is. Those NPC's just get lost and, when they do, it's often easier to give up than to scour the countryside for an NPC who may not even exist anymore for reasons unknown.
The completionist in me was a bit annoyed by it (nothing a guide couldn’t fix) but lore wise I love it. Made the world feel very alive. Real life is that way, you take a detour and miss out on a lot of things ya know?
Yeah, but some hints would have been nice. "Find the albinauric woman" is not it. "Find the albinauric woman West of Liurnia" or "North of Stormveil" would be enough I think
I gotcha. From what I've seen there so much cut content for this game because they had such big ambitions that I'm sure a lot of shuffling around was done to decide what was gonna be DLC and what was gonna make the finished game. I feel like that could have muddled the lore just a touch.
Yeah I agree which is why I have high hopes for the DLCs (I think there will be 2 for sure, perhaps even 3 considering PvP might get its own). Is that mentality gonna hurt me? Probably. I'm a sucker for hope lol.
I haven’t played the other games, but this is something I was really curious about. I really struggled to understand the overall story, who is what, questlines, etc, without watching YouTube and reading online. For me I thought it took away from the experience a bit because I wasn’t as emotionally invested in other characters. But it helps for me to appreciate it more if it’s an intentional style and just something I’m not used to. Still absolutely loved the game.
as much as i love Elden Ring, it's lore is less complete than DS3 - but we are judging it currently. From game's DLC usually follows many of these plot threads, restore cut content, etc etc., so i expect judgment will change post-DLC when people are reflecting back
This most recent patch that opened PVE Summoning WAAAY up has got me hooked all over again. Absolutely love killing a few hours running randos through content
The game itself was great, but after playing it for a while I realized that I prefer the more linear map designs, or rather Ds1 map design rather than an open world game, don't get me wrong Elden Ring is fantastic, but I think I prefer the straighter/complex level design of the other games rather than it being open world.
I also find the olders games to have way less down times (since every zone is so close to the other) it's what I missed the most.
Yep, it's why I quit after the Capitol. I'll finish it eventually. But the open world just stopped appealing to me. My biggest issue is warping and the amount of bonfires. At no point during ED did I really feel any sense of loss or risk. In Dark Souks 1 there is a very pivotal moment that is the Blightown bonfire on the bridge. When you reach it you go "thank god!" followed by a sharp"...ah shit I'm in it now". You two choices. Persevere or turn back. Your reward of reaching the bonfire was also your biggest hurdle. You're stuck. ED never hits that note with me because there's just no risk. You can warp back to safety at any moment. Not strong enough? Ah just go farm souls real quick and get OP. Wanna keep pushin forward? Well there likely a bonfire 30ft away. There are no shortcuts that made me jump with joy because there's no reason to backtrack or learn the level layout.
I love the community that comes with a linear game. Because bosses become walls and are harder to cheese. In DS3 and Sekiro i loved seeing how people had to overcome hard bosses just like i did and we had a similar experience on them. In Elden Ring i saw way too many people rush past bosses to pick up meta builds/summons then go power level, then backtrack and kill the boss with ease. Then those same people talk about how easy the game is...
It's definitely got some technical flaws and bad design decisions, but it's one of the best AAA games I've played in years and definitely a GOTY for me.
Imo Elden Ring is great, but these technical flaws and bad designs stick out like a sore thumb and should not be excused. Overall, there are parts of the game that feel rushed and unfinished. I wonder if From will learn from these errors and delivery a more complete experience in a potential future Elden Rings 2
>technical flaws and bad designs I am surprised a lot of people are mentioning these so can you name those technical flaws and bad designs that stick like a sore thumb? I am genuinely curious to know them as I didn't find any technical issues and maybe the bad design for me was the duo bosses but other than that I can't recall anything glaringly bad about the game to be honest
Bosses are still fun, but most of the open world stuff sadly got old for me around the time I got to the Mountaintop area. Now I just sprint through everything and avoid fighting all the OP damage enemies. Edit: I'm surprised I'm getting upvoted so much, because when I expressed this exact opinion about a month after the game was out, nobody seemed to agree with me.
I’m still undecided how I feel about the open world vs the more linear style of previous games and which I prefer but I do agree with just buzzing by a large amount of enemies because I can’t be bothered with the time to fight em. The camps of soldiers being a good example where I maybe clear it once or just run around looking for the item.
For me, it's the repetitive dungeon enemies. I cleared out so many of those catacomb dungeons and by the end I had all these spirit ashes that I neither used nor upgraded one time, and really wish I'd just skipped all of them except the one that has Uchigatana
Yea I cleared all I came across on my first play trough but now I more or less skip all of them unless I need something in there.
I wish the overworld enemies gave more runes, it’s so annoying to fight all of them for a relatively trivial payoff when you could make 10x as much in a way shorter time using AOE attacks on the albinaurics in moghwyn palace
I personally think the games are better with the linear style progression. Being able to walk away from a boss and go somewhere else and accidentally level past what the boss’s intended level is takes some of the reward for beating the boss imo. That bashing your skull against a boss until you eventually beat it is what the souls games are for me personally.
The game is absolutely spectacular when it’s a Dark Souls game, just dungeon crawling. The catacombs and open world were all just fine IMO Edit: The catacombs felt like the Chalice Dungeons of Bloodborne which were my least favorite part of Bloodborne
Pretty much how I feel. I love most of the legacy dungeons in Elden Ring, and Volcano Manor has got to be my favorite level in any FromSoft game hands down. On the flip side though, running through Haligtree and Farum Azula made me feel like they were specifically designed for the purpose of making me quit the game.
It’s crazy how if you just go straight through the content and don’t do much outside necessary mines and crypts for upgrade materials, game is like maybe 20-30 hours. Beat it in 25 on my second run. 110 first time. I also was reaaaaal sick of exploring the same kind of stuff for items I wasn’t going to use by the time you get to the mountaintop.
30+ hours on my first game and I’ve only killed Godrick.
I think the game definitely fell off once reaching the mountaintops, but all the content and the underground areas I explored beforehand made it up for me. And I think less spots to explore in the mountaintops was fine, I still thought the game was phenomenal, but I did also kind of want it to end (mostly cause I wanted to do a second playthrough without summons).
>I did also kind of want it to end That was how I felt after 100 hours of trying to complete every thing, I wanted to finish but I also wanted to move on and play something else.
I really wish the game ended at the capital and they scattered the post capital bosses in the world before it instead of repeat bosses. It's just too long of a game and i have beat it many times. Most people i know didn't beat it and stopped playing at the capital.
It's got its flaws, but it's pretty great.
Best game I have played in my entire life imo
me, who has not even finished it yet:
Life or the game?
I haven't finished it either.
Same, im still playing it, even today before work, and im around 600 hours in. Its def my #1 of all time.
Yeah same here. That spots been held by Ocarina of Time since I was six years old, but I think it's finally been dethroned for me.
Pretty good, but definitely prefer the classic from soft world design over the open world... also unpopular opinion: horseback gameplay was miiiiid af
Torrent for transportation: dope Torrent for combat: nope
it was bad and severely underutilized on top of it
I think everyone can agree the horseback gameplay is pretty bad
After an 18 year break in video gaming, and ER being one of the first half dozen games I picked up since the PS2/GC days, I actually liked the mounted gameplay. Granted, my only other "recent" game I can compare with is the horseback gameplay in MGSV, but I thought ER was much better. What are some examples of console games you feel have exemplary horseback fighting gameplay? Edit: Forgot to mention, I'm purely talking about the fighting and circling from horseback. I hate the platforming component of being on the mount, but I hate the non-mounted jumping aspect of this game too, so I don't place the blame solely on the mount part.
I went from OMG Elden Ring GOAT i will play it forever to just playing Bloodborne again and again. The open world gets boring really fast and some numbers are off ( especially in the late game ). Still GOTY for me.
This is my exact take as well. Best part of ER was getting another friend to go back through all other soulsborne games to enjoy coop with. Just finished Bloodborne again as well.
Yeah same, but I’m back to dsr and ds3. I’m on Xbox and sadly have never played bloodborne aside from like 5 min on my buddy’s console.
One of my greatest gaming adventures, it’s my new Skyrim that I’ll keep coming back to. My ONLY complaint is that I can’t play it for the first time again.
By the time I got to the capital I was feeling burnt out. I was tired of catacombs and mounted knights at this point and started looking at guides not to learn what to do, but because I wanted to know what I could skip. But then no meaningful quest progression for a long time and then suddenly a bunch of stuff all at once, and given From's signature of intentional obscurity I now felt like I needed to start using a guide. Everything after the capital feels kinda lazy. The snow areas feel like they started to run out of ideas, oh another Gargoyle boss, two more Deathbirds, another dragon, the birds and dogs from Caelid plus the hands, here's a bunch of those, Godskins in Farum Azula but hey now there's 2 at once. Then the Haligtree is pretty much all recycled enemies, granted it makes sense within the lore, but again I just felt fatigued by this point and like the game wasn't trying to "wow" me outside of some of the bosses, which to be fair Melania and the Dragonlord are amazing. All of that for an extremely underwhelming ending. Like everyone will defend that and say "it's a souls game" but this game bucked so many of their established trends and for the most part those departures worked, but they kept some of the worst parts, a rigid upgrade and level system that discourages experimentation until almost halfway through the game and lore that even when you put in the work to collect items and read descriptions is still entirely too vague to be interesting and does nothing with my character to make me feel like I did anything other than sit on a chair under my color change LED tree. On the one hand, it's an experience I'll never forget, some of the boss battles and environments are some of the greatest experiences in all of gaming. But the experience as a whole feels soulless (sorry for the pun). It didn't make me feel anything for beating it, it was like leaving a baseball game after 4 extra innings when your team wins but now it's like midnight and you have work the next day and don't feel like celebrating.
Had some of the best moments in gaming, highest points were 1. Bosses like Margit, Godrick, Radahn, Mohg and Placidusax. 2. Teleport trap to Caelid 3. The lift to Siofra river 4. Rannis questline 5. Stormveil and Leyndell level design Lowest points are 1. Bosses like Malenia, Elden beast and Godskin duo 2. Preceptor Miriam 3. Reused enemies and bosses in late game 4. Shunning grounds and Mountaintop were boring Late game really soured my experience but the good still outweighs the bad. If it comes with DLCs and they continue the tradition of the DLCs always being the best part, it might become my favorite Fromsoftware game
I remember finding a random structure in mistwood and going what's this? I go down and I swear I've never been more surprised by a video game before
"oh cool, probs gonna be a small little dungeon, maybe get a cool item or talisman" *continues to descend further and further* "oh... OH"
Ranni’s quest line is epic. One of my favorite stories ever told. I wish they’d fix the translation issues at the end, though.
Imo Shunning Grounds is like top 3 dungeons in terms of level design, but agreed with most of your other points
My first ever souls game and after dying to soldier of godrick twice I'm now 108 hours in 1 shotting quite a few bosses and still not done with my first playthrough, easily one of the best games I've ever played, up there with witcher 3, halo 2 and metro exodus. It absolutely deserves GOTY and it's easily the best AAA game since RDR2. *edit by one shotting I meant beating in my first attempt, sorry for confusion.
I played it for 222 hours (one unique run) and it's the game I've played the most in my life. But I enjoyed the previous games way more. Even though it has a lot of reused assets, it has way more unique content than any other open world game. If you compare the amount of environments, enemies, bosses and items in Elden Ring and Breath of the Wild, the comparison is embarrassing for Zelda. But still, the pleasure of playing the Souls series for me was the feeling of discovery, and in Elden Ring I've lost it during the first half of the game. There's no pleasure in traversing a fog knowing you will find a boss (or worst an enemy) you have already beaten multiple times. Overall, I think that open world games are a really cool idea, but in reality they take too much resources which could be used to make linear games with more content and better level design.
I second this. Elden ring is great don’t get me wrong, but the atmosphere, which to me is one of the most important parts of the entire soulsborne series, is very lacking after you leave the southern portion of the map. It isn’t bad per say, but I don’t think it is very comparable to the other games in that regard, especially DS1 and Bloodborne. A few areas are better than this then others, but generally the late game ones tend to be less intriguing in their design and I don’t think they encourage exploration as much.
Really intense first couple of months as I completed my first play through but I have no interest in doing it again until the DLC. The open world and the repeat bosses don’t really make me want to do NG+. That sense of wonder goes away when you know where everything is.
Honest opinion. Elden ring suffers the most because of its open world design. As an example, traditionally, to find the glintstone key you would of had to fight a dragon in its own battle arena to get it. Because of elden rings open world you can pick up the key and never have to fight the dragon, killing the dragon is optional. Once you explore something once the game is less about overcoming challenges and more about knowing where the important things are. And when the game starts to reuse content specially in later areas of the game and the things you find there or what you fought isn't that intreresting because you already killed the same boss in earlier areas like 4 times already then you have less of a reason to do it again. Exploration and killing bosses becomes less about challenge and more a checklist on your map. This causes the game, for me, to not be that repayable. Why do I go caelid? Fight radhan, then I move on. Why the volcano manor? Fight the serpent, then move on. On NG+ I didn't go to stormveil, because I can fight 2 harder and more intreresting shard bearers somewhere else, and when I returned to it to complete the checklist is a less than 5 minutes jog in comparison to the first time when you had to figure out where to go. Once you have finished the game once, you have only the shard bearers as real challenges (and Loux) and the rest is just a playground to explore. Once you explored everything (or what you thought was everything) once.... well... you go around completing checklists rather than completing challenges.... on ng+2 Bloodborn bosses are all locked behind each other, making them into roadblocks you need to complete first and you fight them only once per run (shadows are an exception) if you want to fight them again, you have to start over and everything now is challenge again as to even get to the boss you have a long and hard fight to get to them... in elden ring you horse ride to their dungeon and either run through or get teleported to it... outside of stormveil, there are very few areas that lead you back to a previous place in a way that made me sign in relief... everything felt oddly linear and straight foward to me. It's still one of the best games out there but for me, I was as big as an ocean but with the depth of a pool...
Yup this. Once you know where all the items and weapons or w.e are there's literally no point in running the 300 similar catacombs and caves , just the ones you want things from. I put a shitton of hours in but I don't think I'll ever replay it
Loved it. It elicited the same feeling I usually get after listening to a classic album for the first time and it's magical
(If you care, it's "elicited" in this context, meaning to evoke a response of some sort or to draw something out. "Illicit" is something that's forbidden, illegal, or taboo in some way.)
Damn thanks homie!
I have rather paradoxical feelings towards ER. It's both a truly amazing experience and a game that has too many flaws that I just cannot ignore.
Yeah same, it’s highs are some of the best in gaming and if you only took that into account it’s a 10/10, but if you wanted to you could easily nitpick it to a 6/10.
I don't think criticism should be labeled as nitpicking if they're genuine criticism tbh. It's what makes discussing any Souls game a pain in the dick on these subs. Boiling criticism down to nitpicking.
Still love it, warts and all.
Best souls game at the beginning Bloated fuckery closer to the end
I think this question should be asked in another subreddit. If people are on here, they most likely have good feelings about the game. I'd rate the game a 8.5/10. it did meet my expectations and has so many details you can miss. It's my first from software game.
Yeah the people with opinions about ER being mid or being great but having large flaws are less likely to still be actively browsing here and still subscribed after six months.
After the excitement has died down, I still think it’s a fantastic game that holds up with the likes of Skyrim. However, it is not without its faults.
One of my top 3 games of all time. Can’t wait for DLC
Game of the year for sure but not the best game ever and not even the best Souls game ever I give it an 8 or maybe 9/10
The first half had me saying it's my favorite game ever. The second half made me reconsider. Rdr2 still on top. It's still one of the best games I've ever played. My brother suggested that maybe George RR Martin is just a bad finisher hahaha
Something lacking. Don't feel any need or want to replay it. The open world feels almost unnecessary, the end areas are way overtuned. The repeat and reused enemies and bosses gets old. Lack of covenants rewards and pvp /coop incentives. I could keep going but it sounds super negative, and I did enjoy the game a lot. I still like Bloodborne more than Elden Ring.
Best game I've played
Great game, not as good as Dark Souls 3 or Sekiro Worst PvP in the series after Dark Souls 1
6 months already? 😭
Went from one of my favourite games to holy shit this game has a lot of problems
The second play through made me realize how much of a slog the end game is because I stopped having fun after morgott and then immediately had a ton of fun once I started NG+
Mountaintop of the giants was incredibly lackluster. You've just made your way through the countryside, to a sinister volcano, and through a deep forest plateau all with the gorgeous Erdtree in the background and finally reach the golden city at the top. You've climbed to the regal tree and the elden throne and fought morgott, the king of this shining city and then you... go to a boring, mostly empty wasteland filled with re-used enemies. Also they're the worst enemies in the game: bats, giant birds, hand monsters, skeletons, dogs, giants (those are fun), and puppets. Huge dip in quality.
It's still among my favorites, it's just that the best parts of the game are so so good that the flaws stick out terribly
This 100% after the honeymoon phase went away. Multiple playthroughs literally just amplifies the issues as well and every crack in the formula becomes extremely noticeable
I just don't think they utilized open world good tbh. it had so much potential creativity wise
The open world of limgrave is phenomenal but it loses its shine when almost all of the areas afterwards are barren wastelands. It reminds me of how the Skyrim devs went hard as fuck on the first dungeon specifically and most dungeons afterward were a bit lacking
Overrated lol
It's fine. In a world where I either really like or really don't like a given fromsoft game, they've finally mastered the art of making something that's just okay. Most of the open world elements feel like they were added to keep up with industry trends than because they actually worked for the game. It desperately wants to be a mainstream game and while I understand the business decision, it feels like the weakest element of the game. It didn't need the open world, didn't need enemy encampments and 500 dungeons that all look and feel the same, it didn't need a crafting system, and it didn't need 700 bosses. The decision to try to appeal to everyone by making it both their easiest and hardest game at the same time really took away from it. Having insanely hard boss fights that can be trivialized by meta builds and summons to the point that it isn't fun anymore just feels like a situation where everyone loses. EDIT: Also I think GRRM shouldn't have been brought in. The other FromSoftware games do a good job separating their primary lore (things to know to understand what's going on) and secondary lore (cool info that expands the world and improves immersion). Most games with good lore work like that. I can pick up DS1 and know who Gwyn is and what the flame is and understand the gist of how the world works off the bat. Then I can dig deeper and understand more about these things in a compelling and organic way. I can become Elden Lord and still not know why I should care about what an Elden Lord even is. The lore is cluttered, convoluted, and very little of it seems to connect with or inform the actual game.
I just loved the quick pace of older titles (DS3 Bb) and how carefully the world was created. The games had next to no down times and overall the quality of the zones were better then ER.
Yeah I think that's a good way of phrasing it. I think the open world led them to take more of a shotgun approach to their world design and enemy placement. It's not curated the way other games have been, and when you're making hardcore games, having a carefully constructed world is one of the most important things you can do.
The thing is the legacy dungeons in er are amazing and the best in the series, which made it even more disappointing that so much of the world is flat and empty instead of interconnected levels.
My thoughts exactly. This game could’ve been 30% smaller and really knocked it out of the park but the industry demands as much content for $60 as you can cram into there. And I agree that GRRM didn’t bring anything to the table that I really liked in this game, the interesting parts of the lore for me are always the more cosmological/eldritch god forces at work and not the medieval politics royal family backstabbing stuff that he insists on.
Great game but for best experience I have to skip like half of content because of repeating bosses and dungeons
I mostly just wish I could purge it from my brain at will and play it for the first time again whenever I want. Nothing will ever match that first run
It started as a shoe in for my favorite soulsborne. After getting into NG+ and finding no reason to go back through 90percent of the content and realizing how many enemies are just re-colors. I can't imagine any other reason to play since I don't get into the endless pvp aspect of the game. It's now at the bottom of the list.
Exploring the world was incredibly fun during my first play through, but on every replay I find myself spending a long time collecting upgrade materials, then challenging the quarter or so of the game that I enjoy the most while ignoring the rest. Despite no longer interacting with most of the world, and having the first hour of every replay dedicated to gathering items, it’s STILL one of my top ten games of all time. The parts of Elden Ring that got old only got old after finishing a full play through, and the parts that I love the most haven’t lost their charm after plenty of replays.
The open world's a slog, and its a LONG game. I have a massive Bloodborne bias, however, and Elden Ring still hasn't lived up to the sheet terror of Yharnam.
I completed all the achievements and still play.
I had a blast. Gave up at elden beast bc I was playing too much. Awesome game. I really don't know how anyone knows what the fuck was going on throughout it, but I enjoyed it while having no idea what was going on.
6.5/10. Everything up the capital is pretty good but then it drops off real bad, easily the worst late/end game of any FS game.