I disagree on the level design. Its TOO complicated without some guide. Areas on other sides of the map connect to places you would never guess. Its cool for a surprise factor, but I reached the final boss without seeing half the map. And I took my time trying to avoid the main paths. My DLC playtime doubled once I looked up a guide how to reach entire areas because I missed a path behind one of the 100 rocks scattered in a field while 5 flying monsters was chasing me that aren't worth fighting for the 10th time. Guess I should git gud
The dlc is good but two things that burned me up is getting caught in corners and the camera goes nuts and the enemy s are ridiculous. They can smash you in the ground and continue to damage you but not the reverse. They lie on the ground for seems like 5 seconds sometimes and cannot be damaged. I think this is bs and it takes away the feeling of reward for being able to knock difficult enemies on their butts. Lots of other things but these are the top things that made me want to quit playing.
I felt like the story was obvious. Yeah theres a bunch of subplots but the only reason youd go into the shadow lands is to claim miquella's great rune. Everything else is towards that end. If you learn that miquella discarded his great rune by finding it broken in the hands of the scadutree avatar, well youve already beaten messmer which means the guidance of grace is back and telling you to kill miquella to prove yourself as a lord, and you probably know that miquella is trying to become a god via ansbach, so hes a threat to your claim to power as elden lord anyways. Theres no point where you know the great rune was discarded and dont have a reason to kill miquella, even if that reason is "greater will told me so"
It's so depressing for me that this community and the studio is ruining it for themselves. Since eons I am saying those games need difficulty settings. Simple as that. Because yes, skill differences are reality. Disabilities are reality, too, for many people. Time and Energy management, too. Yet here I am, forced to use mechanics I don't want to use, because I would love to experience a Dual, but can't. Get told just use a summon, get gud, skill issue. YES, my skill will be my skill with my 37 years. My disability will not get better either. YES! What IF it's a "skill issue". Try to make a Skyrim mod like I do, try to knit, learn a language. Do you have equally talent and skills for all of this? Should I give you sock needles and some yarn and tell you, figure it out alone. And when you can't make your own wool sock, laugh in your face, mock you and tell you, get gud. Instead of being a reasonable fan community since eons you guys are against difficulty settings. The most BASIC mechanic to ensure that everybody can have the same experience, regardless of where they are. The most BASIC mechanic to ensure you can have balance. But here we are, with a broken cam system, broken balance system, broken Bosses, recycled Bosses and Locations. Glitches and performance issues, particles that tank FPS, on a game depending on i-frames and accuracy. Where the game runs fine on max setting the whole time, but not when you REALLY need it. Not that it helps to go on LOW SETTINGS! Where Elite Enemies and their locations are so badly designed that instead of being a joy to fight, with sword or pot, they make you wanna turn of the game you have spend over 800h on. And that's sad. It's the studio itself but as well the community. We have nowadays an actual trend of games that remove a BASIC mechanic, difficulty settings. And it's mind boggling. Because in the end - you as a studio should want your vision to be experienced by the people that buy your game and spend their precious time and energy on it. What do you as a player, or the studio have from gatekeeping and exclusivity. What exactly? Because I don't understand it.
Got a lot of mf in the comments complimenting Malenia. Just goes to show how the FromSoft cycle is alive and well. Excited for 12 months from now when we all look back and say "why can't we just go back to a great boss like Radahn."
criminally underrated video, i could not think of presenting the issues with this game better than you did, i hope Fromsoft actually watches this video instead of watching Vati's speculation on vague lore info and laugh at it while sipping a coffee
In the Radahn fight, he gives you ample opportunity to heal. The problem is that it's at the cost of an attack opening. He is aggressive enough that the only down time you get to heal is at the very end of his combos.
Not gonna lie I vastly prefer the delivery of this line in the original version. Honestly I don't know why they didn't reuse the audio from the original it is the same exact dialog read by the same actor or at least in the English version it is.
Totaly agree i hope they find back challanges are cool but only if its not frustration to a point you over come them with a build you dont like not every one is a pro i subed and liked 👍
"Just some overclocks" you mean, unlocks that can completely change how a weapon works and also acomidatw different builds to massivly increase build variety. Just those small things? Im assuming that bc you were grinding for full gold and wanted maximum exp, which is phyco behaviour honestly ngl, that you just ran meta vuild and didnt experient with funns that much, and didnt see just how much overclocks effect the game. Either that or you were deliberately lying to paint the game in a bad light, bc some overclovks can completely change how you use a weapon
This was my first FS game and a lot of your critique matches mine. First: I get the hype, elden ring and the DLC are special. They're unique both with the gameplay and the level of craft that went into them. But I started ER right after beating Ghost of Tsushima and I gotta say I was a little disappointed with the combat mechanics in ER. A lot of the fighting seems to revolve around memorizing very specific attack patterns of bosses, and fromsoft's scaling of difficulty seems to be simply adding longer move combos, narrowing the window you have to attack. Big battles then felt less like a fighting game and more like guitar hero. My favorite fights were against enemies like the crucible knights and the nameless mausoleum NPCs-- These felt more like actual 'fights' where there was back and forth, I didn't feel like I was fighting a giant Simon Says machine. I think having combat so centered around the s of the roll mechanic kinda gimps the design. Would love to see them lean into and expand the parry mechanic, and give you built-in quickstep or something. Just more options that raise the risk/reward factor of combat and let you interrupt, create your own attack openings (instead of dodging for 10 sec so you can land a slash during a recovery animation), or other tools to make the boss react to the player more often. I hear good things about Sekiro, I might try that next.
World design is peak, exploration is awesome, lore is questionable, and gameplay/bosses are just awful. Every single issue the base game had in regards to combat is made 10x worse here in the expansion. Infinite poise, non-stop attacks and weird delays, barely any openings and way, WAY too much AoE. I really want to love the experience, but it just ends up being so frustrating. Difficult for the sake of being difficult, Fromsoft kinda forgot about being fair along the way.
This video speaks to me, i enjoy fighting bosses 1 v 1, but the 2nd phase of radahn forced me to use summons because i didnt want to go for the boring 0 tank dmg shield build, thats even less statisfying.
You spoke about lack of motivation for our character, yet , all souls games can be looked at this way if you do not know the proper context , as you said "when does that become our problem" but even if we're talking about elden ring specifically, in the main game we are the tarnished who is to become the elden lord , if we choose to progress , that's who we are , and same goes for our story in the dlc , we are still the same tarnished who I believe is trying save miquella, and also stop him from becoming a god for our own benefit
Bob 2 hands a weapon big enough to give him a bit of poise/armor when his attacks are past a certain frame. If you look closely, the times you flinched him are earlier into his swings. And the times that he armored through, you poked him a bit later.
i’m so glad someone touched on the replayability. no one talks about it, and it’s honestly horrible, from someone who loves replaying souls games, it’s very frustrating edit: finished the video, i agree with a lot of your opinions really well. Radahn was really frustrating, because even though i knew that the deflecting hard tear was an option, i hadn’t used it the entire game, and i wanted to play it like a souls game, not sekiro. But the fight felt unfair and very frustrating, and very difficult to learn, especially when dying very quickly upon reaching phase 2. i eventually caved after hours and hours and used the deflecting hardtear to beat it and just,, did not feel satisfied. amazing video, thank you.
so on one side we criticise the difficulty of the game, while being able to build your own difficulty with the amount of scadufragments, npc or bell summons, and using strong(broken equipment). but on the other side we criticise weapons and tears to be too strong? idk if the sekiro-tear was intended to be this strong, but just having a negative look on every aspect of difficulty, while ignoring possibilities, seems kinda disingenious.
I really wanted to love the DLC, but I just don’t. It feels like Fromsoft is punishing the entire player base just for the actions of a handful of them… I don’t mind the bosses having combos, but some of the damage on certain moves is just stupid af. I’ll definitely be skipping it on my new game plus, once is enough for me lol.
I just don’t get how we go from bosses like Mesmer, Bayle, Radahn, Midra to bosses like Golden Hippo, Gaius, and Scadutree Avatar… like Ik Elden ring is all about having a broad scale of bosses and environments but these bosses just felt so random to me and the quality drops sometimes. I’m replaying ds3 rn and I can’t help but realize how the base game and dlc feel more grounded than shadow of the erdtree. I also don’t get why we got such few cutscenes for each boss, Bayle, Rellana, Putrescent Knight, ect. Like don’t get me wrong I enjoyed my first playthrough but looking back a month later I realize how underwhelming the dlc is in terms of the boss fights. I loved the different atmospheres and the lore that was expanded on but like it feels so rushed, that last cutscene after defeating Radahn is so underwhelming which Ik is fromsoft fashion but this was like another level of underwhelming. Ik they said they don’t plan on making any more Elden ring content as of now but I pray they eventually do a second dlc. Maybe it feels off because I played the dlc after beating the base game when you’re supposed to enter the dlc mid game after defeating mogh but idk.
It isn't said, but we're there to prevent Miquella's reign. While we're with everyone else in following in his footsteps, we aren't blinded by him. We're kind of an agent of Marika, preventing Miquella from usurping the Lands Between. All he would do is give the world another Golden Order-like rule; and we already saw how that ended.
I have 350h and 24 promotions. That's 15h per promotion. Just taking my time, enjoying the ride, these 350h are spread across 2 years, and the first year was all on low hazard. I'll reach All Gold at around 400h. I'm not an avid completionist, but I completed Slay the Spire and it took me roughly 380h. Maybe it's normal?
14:06 I have issues with the DLC's story, but I feel like this part makes sense. We have to kill Miquella because if he becomes a god he will prevent us from becoming Elden Lord.
The whole “why am I doing this?” thing definitely affected me too. Especially when it came to Messmer imo. That entire thing could have been avoided if you were just able to say “the lands between is screwed your mom is held captive by the greater will”.
I enjoyed the dlc right out the gate and was having fun up untill i found myself in the cerulean coasts. I spent 2 hours looking for a site of grace so i could take a moment and explore just to have to go onto the wiki and look one up. I played the entirety of the base game with no guides or help and managed to find all but one site of grace. I was frustrated and disappointed because elden ring was a glowing example for me of how to reward curiosity so to then go from that sense of excitement of exploring to just wanting to get it over with kinda killed it for me. I felt cheated at the last boss fight and when i looked it up and got to see the hitboxes on his attacks i felt vindicated but mostly just sad. The game i have grown to love had spat in my face for doing all the things it encoraged me to do for hundreds of hours. I know i haven't killed all the bosses like the big finger monster but i really dont have any desire to play the game anymore and thats what hurt the most.
Radahn sucks but I honestly dont see how people are hating on all the bosses for having to roll and poke. Bayle and messmer had intresting movesets and felt pretty fair.
When I, and a lot of people first approached this game I don't think achievements or achievement speedrunning were ever on any of our minds, neither do I think the devs ever really properly thought of them either. I think the achievements are there either as an little extra challenge for those that want it (the barrel hoop) or just something to say "oh neat" to whenever you got it (promotion achievements), rather than something to grind painfully towards. So in that regard, while I don't believe this review is accurate to a wider communitys perspective, it still represents an audience who have/want to/do play this game. Thus for those that do wish to look at the game from this angle, this video certainly has many valid points to be considered.
