@@alejohp8725Then go watch Steel or G9 if you want greater depth of analysis. Saint approaches the game in a much different way regarding the souls games I wouldn’t call him a normie at all though lol
@@radagonsoreseal3457 I mean. When Rat asks him for criticism, all he can come up with is the Abyssal Woods being empty. Sure! But how things like Malenia not even recognizing Miquella’s Great Rune? Gideon not getting a single bit of new dialog? Melina not showing up at all even when we kill her brother? Midra having no connection to the nomadic merchants? I could go on and on. The DLC was great, but come on now.
@@alejohp8725just a matter for priorities. Saint cares less about the story connecting and more about fun gameplay and how it interacts with other gameplay.
@@jjohnson01 I would hope that guys that criticize the gameplay aspect would focus on things like getting a few of the new weapons into the base game. And how, when looking into the new weapons, we really only have a few of each kind. I understand that the DLC was fun, but I don’t think he’s thought about how to actually make it even better. FromSoft needs to hear these things. I had to go through a number of hoops to get the dry leaf arts into the base game for a fresh run. Why not sell a basic form of them at the twin maidens, or add them as a new loot in the base game?
Rellana's swords should've been 2 separate weapons that have a special synergy when powerstanced. THAT would've been the best way to do it imo. Appease the int/fth ppl, and provide fun tools for other builds as well
Something about Midra's Manse that I really loved and Ive not seen anyone else talk about is the effect in the air. The particles sitting still in the air just gave it such an ancient dechevaled feeling.
i see glimpses of a future game, with the mechanics of the deflect tear and guard counters, and where enemies can deflect you, like the fire knights or demi human swordsman are refined even further, where a really beautiful combat dance can be present. i truly hope they go down this path somehow
That would be the ideal path in my opinion, instead of this 20 second roll fest before you get a single r1 punish before having to watch the boss do his 1 sided theatrics again. I played the whole Dlc with the deflect tear and it made the game fun as hell. Just 25 attempts to kill Miq solo for the first time. After that I used cheat engine to revive bosses and have killed him consistently with a bunch of different builds, it's just fun being able to parry for real. From really needs to keep boss rematches as a core feature going forward too. I'm not playing this whole giant open world over and over just to fight the highlights of the game again.
So..... Sekiro? Lol. You pretty much described it save for the guard counters. It's pure hopium but I can't help but wonder if the introduction of these mechanics is preparing people for a Sekiro sequel. It's my personal favorite FromSoftware game and an refinement and expansion on an already incredible movement and combat system would be incredible.
@@Marc_bryan yeah, but I want it better than sekiro where there is still menaingful build variety and customization. I actually enjoy Lies of P more than sekiro and the from soft series when it come to tightness of mechanics and game feel. No bull input que and delays, no crap camera, etc.
@@lilbuddy324 kinda, but Ive been doing this ever since the original release of the DS2 releases, playing them on high NG cycles on meta level pvp. I like the game being as brutal as possible as it forces me to truly learn the boss movesets
I mean usually people on ng + 7 are way over that level so that logic doesn’t really make sense since the majority of players even on ng+ are easily over 200 or even 250+ depending how much they farm.
@@Pe37777 It's just an old habit of mine, I don't really make new characters as often as I go to NG+ cycles, and as someone who invades a lot I also just don't change my level that often. I even streamed me going through the dlc on NG+7 if you are curious
As somebody who’s done loads of challenge runs in bloodborn I honestly don’t get why he dislikes the fire. You’re just forced to out position the fire what ultimately is very similar to the pillars of light in the Radahn fight. It even has the same effect of it showing you how to deal with the previous phase in a more effective way. What he rightfully praised about Radahns second phase. Even if I don’t particularly like consort Radahn myself. I don’t hate him though as he definitely has his good aspects.
@@porkwhisperer3050It has trash lingering hitboxes that go on for more than the effects appearing on screen, it’s just a janky fight overall. Doesn’t come close to Malenia or Rellana mechanically.
@@HeyTarnished I really don’t think there’s anything janky about Maria and the hitbox lingers at most literal frames after the fire effect goes. I don’t like her as much as Melania or Rellana but those are both at worst in my top 10 favourite fromsoft bosses so that doesn’t mean Maria is a bad boss by any means. I think Maria is still one of the better bosses fromsoft has ever designed.
@@porkwhisperer3050The bloodfire fucked me up so bad but I enjoyed every minute even when I was stonewalled on that third phase on my first playthrough. I had to go to arcane to get past her but ever since then, I've committed to fighting her with the beast hunter saif and it's SO satisfying to dance with her like that.
@@porkwhisperer3050 Ofc I love Lady Maria’s fight regardless, even if the fight did not age well compared to what we have with Elden Ring bosses, the music & aesthetics/lore (and even the fight) still slap, it’s one of those fights you’ll never forget, however I do prefer Ludwig & Orpahn so much more than her. 🎉❤️ Btw I recommend you try fighting Rellana with a Backhand Blade with the Blind Spot Ash of War while using the Sekiro Deflection tear, it literally transforms the game’s combat to new heights, it’s peak FromSoft combat I swear!
I was expecting Midra's Manse to go down quite a bit, especially with the FF connection. I think Abyssal Wood would be improved by removing all the extra graces and the stakes of Marika, also making it permantly dark. It's too bright during the day. Also making the areas with the Aging Untouchables narrower so you have to stealth properly rather than being able to just run around sometimes.
Lies of P could kind of be played as strength Sekiro. Most of the weapons with the best guard values were big, slow, and heavy. Having the highest guard values was very advantageous for parry play style, because it made missing a parry and getting a normal guard much more forgiving.
That's what I thought too. Saint mentioned a cannon and P even has that as one of the puppet arms. And don't forget that a Lies of P DLC is also coming so who knows what else will be in it.
@@fastenedcarrot9570 they all had the same similar shortcut electric doors there was very minimal exploration, they were cool linear levels but nothing stands out besides combat encounters which is fine because that’s what it focus’s on but there isn’t a level that cool besides the starting areas the opera house and the second last level everything else blends together
@@Jcoaerlrsiocno but if you just want to play with a friend and keep getting invaded it kinda sucks... Also, not everyone summons an ally to make the game easier, somebody just has friends and likes to play with them... I did my first rune level 1 in coop, and it was so funny to be both underleveled for endgame areas, but the worst part were still invasions, because somehow even at level 1 you get invaded, and it's not avoidable. I hope from gives the option to play without PVP in the next games, even because if i want to make some PVP i just use the tongue or the arena, and when I invade someone who does not want to fight me, I'm the first one not having fun.
As a lover of DS2: Yes, we want out dark infusion. The sad thing is that we don't even like the split magic / fire weapons where the scale separately. So the closest we got was the Madness weapons, but then madess itself scales with arcane, so we are still fucked over.
<a href="#" class="seekto" data-time="77">01:17</a>:57 I hate how the Hosts side is almost always misrepresented in these discussions. ☝️🧐 The problem with invaders in the older games goes beyond just "feeling bad" because you lost to a human Player, it's some of that, but also a laundry list of other obscure things. 1.) Lag/ latency issues. 2.) Twinking & gimmicks 3.) Using the Enemies as a shield 4.) Taunts/ showboating (Dung Pies) 5.) Trolling/ griefing 6.) Hackers/ cheating 7.) Skill/ knowledge gap Still waiting on the day for one of these discussions to be 'honest'.
Yeah it’s this. I enjoy co-op as an alternate way to play but I fundamentally don’t enjoy the vastly different combat of PvP. This would be bearable if there wasn’t a not insignificant chance that the person I’m fighting isn’t functionally unbeatable without being extremely good at PvP. I haven’t played any Elden ring co-op outside of seamless co-op so I don’t know how bad twinking/cheating/latency is but if it was anything like any of the older games I would still hate being invaded.
In all my time being aware and somewhat involved in this discourse I have never seen any good faith engagement with these points (1 and 2 are the strongest as far as I'm concerned). "It's just ego" has become thought-terminating cliche levels of trite at this point. My core issue has always been the lack of any real incentive to engage with the system as a host. Why deal with the issues you mentioned when I don't even get anything out of it outside of experience with a mode of fighting that I already don't enjoy? I think Rata and Saint "get it" more than a lot of others especially since they seem to understand why From would effectively remove solo invasions beyond some craven attempt to cater to casuals or PvP haters.
@@UnknownJudgment They had a good system in DeS where body form actually gave a strong incentive to engage with PVP and Co-op. In the rest of the games they've just made the incentives weaker so pvp feels like a tacked on gimmick instead of a core piece of the world.
@@La0bouchere Demon's Souls' system sort of magnifies the issue I have with the other games: the reward doesn't really outweigh the risk. Yes, you have more health in body form, but dying in body form sends your world tendency toward black which both makes that world harder and potentially precludes access to specific events, items, or areas. And it is, paradoxically, easier to die due to the invasion risk. I'd rather just take the health/ring slot loss. Body form is a liability in my estimation.
My problem with Abyssal Woods is the lack of enemies. I was expecting Forbidden Woods vibes where youre slowly sludging through a bunch of balled snakes, giant balled snakes, snakemen, etc. and fighting them off to attempt to clear and loot the area. Instead is just a giant area with a few annoying wintern lanterns and a few pushover enemies. I thought there was finally going to be a vast open “dungeon” that you can just run through on horseback but instead it’s just not really satisfying until you get to the manor.
Yeah that area has very little in it for its size. And the fact that the most common enemy type are the rats is even worse. Can't wait to see how the Convergence modders will liven it up.
@@valentinvas6454 i literally already had the beast repellant torch equipped so the rats didnt even bother me… was legit just a boring ass stroll through an empty forest.
I loved the atmosphere, but this was probably the biggest example of an area having a disproportionate ratio of space to content. I also came out it feeling like Midra’s Manse was smaller than expected, because the giant patch of space behind it on the map turned out to be completely empty. I remember seeing the manor, looking at the map, and thinking it was about to be a proper sized legacy dungeon.
Yeah, plus i really wanted a Frenzied Flame enemy that was a real fight, the laterns are a gimmick and the rest are rats and recycled enemies, i wanted some Bloodborne esque frenzied flame series of enemies
@@rosameltrozo5889 that’s the thing. A gimmick enemy is fine when it serves to supplement the other main field enemies in an area. When it _is_ the main field enemy, and in this case the only non-recycled field enemy, it just doesn’t work
Good thing most people don't know about this since nobody looks at crafting otherwise every invasions would literally be infinite magic spamming with everyone popping these + blessed blue dew.
Longest one handed light gs combo I've found is running heavy, light, light, heavy, heavy(?), light, light. Its so good, I love actually having animations that flow into eachother like that. And by so good I mean borderline useless, but I can do it!!
I'm not big on PvP, mostly cause I'm just not very good, but one of my most memorable Souls experiences is besting an invader on top of Sen's Fortress. The dopamine I got from that proved that From should just be allowed to cook, even if it's not a feature I interact with much, it can still be amazing.
I love invasions. I was one of those people who did a coop run, taunters tongue, and earnestly went through the level. It's very fun. Maybe the only way a solo player can make it worth an invader's time is to turn on the blue sentienel function
Hey I also love Rellana, she is hard but with fatal exploitable flaws that makes her fight a fun spectacle. Anyways found today her match with Halo Scythe in my challenge run and everything was perfect.
It turned out the exploit was serious. There was a client-side function that pushed a message to invaders but had no bounds checking, leading to ROP chaining. All you needed was the player ID and a hacked client. To quote the GH repo, "In Dark Souls III, A malicious attacker abusing this would have been able to reliably execute a payload of up to 1.3MiB of shellcode on every online player's machine within seconds." A person just needed to be connected to the online servers, and they would be susceptible.
<a href="#" class="seekto" data-time="130">2:10</a>:24 From what I remember, the full Liurnia skip is to beat Godrick and Radahan, then go down until you get to the Deeproot Depths, then use the teleporter by Fia to skip directly to Leyndell ramparts grace. You miss out on the bloody finger, but can still get the recusant finger from volcano manor. I may have missed something, it's been a while since I did that run.
Sad that they did not extensively touch on the DLC final boss here. I'm just hoping that there will one day be a rational discussion on his difficulty, because frankly it's not badly designed or a shit boss. Very difficult to the point of stretching combat limits, yes; impossible unless you do certain specific builds, no. The final boss is very learnable, just takes a lot of time because the puzzle pieces are revealed every time you die to his moves. He just has so many moves and tricks. As Rurikhan said in his podcast with Rata, he is, most likely, the FINAL ER BOSS EVER. So it makes sense that he is WTF hard. I just hope their next game's bosses are NOT all like this (if with same character movement and capabilities) 😅 EDIT: Wrong statement
You are fighting a god, the soul of the most powerful demigod in his prime in the body of another demigod, it would be disappointing if it was normal difficulty
Sniper Elite 5 has coop Invasions and honestly, its pretty good imo. 1944 German occupied france 2 allied special force snipers infiltrating a french Chateau then suddendly a third player joins the lobby a german sniper is hunting those 2 coop players then its an ultimte cat & mouse game. As invader who knows the game you look if they have completed any objektives yet, you find corpses of german soldiers you follow the trail and hear a shot, they are clearing another encampment. You take position waiting for the right moment and take your chance BOOOM first down, injured now you look for the other one. Its honestly a blast but I havent played in a while so I dont know how active it is
I love cooping and helping hosts for PvEvP, ever since DS III's undead village, and it's really fun to go up against an invader in ER. It's nothing personal, its just a game, and both sides are playing it, so none of it bothers me. I even enjoy the challenge of fighting another person.
I thought Radahn was ridiculously hard but that's because I was unaware I was on NG+. It felt awfully hard for a NG boss. I fought him on NG while helping a friend and found that it was wayyyy easier than I thought it was.
For all of the other souls games, I go solo first. Then I do co-op. I did the DLC and much of my first playthrough of Elden Ring co-op so I could have those random invasions back.
Saint is the best guest. Also I love Unicorn Overlord- I am older than you guys, I grew up playing Ogre Battle on the SNES. Unicorn Overlord is a love letter to that game 100%, it's built on it and references it in many ways (even the name is a reference- There are no ogres in Ogre Battle, just like I think there are no Unicorns in Unicorn Overlord) - But Unicorn Overlord added a lot more flexibility and control for you to play with compared to Ogre Battle. I started playing it and got sucked in by the gameplay, I put down Elden Ring DLC for a weekend and just played UO
Hate to be that guy but strength Sekiro would just be Guts and I'm down I hope that the deflect tear symbolizes FS recognizing the wishes for alternative methods of avoiding damage than shields and rolls. I love how LOTF has both dodging and rolling, but want that taken further with rolling being limited to a double tap if you're light weight, and if you're medium weight you do a smaller leap when tapping and double tapping does a lunge and if you're heavy tapping does a small side step and double tapping does a shoulder bash
I certainly understood that NG+6 would be difficult, and my complaints really don't begin until the final boss's second phase. When you speak about how the shadow clones and such are "psychological warfare" because they don't really do damage, I can assure you that they most certainly do on higher cycles. As far as I'm concerned, being able to effectively avoid all attacks and thus all damage from them is an essential element of the Fromsoft combat formula. This is not to say that it should be easy, but that it must be feasible. Several of the final boss's attacks can't be reliably dodge rolled or even BHS'd, which is where I draw the line for "too much." There are a couple more examples, like Bayle's fire laser being one of the most inconsistent attacks to dodge that they've ever made, but the final boss is where the bulk of these attacks exist. I am merely concerned that such attacks may continue worming their way into the design of Fromsoft's games, which would not be to their betterment.
regarding rellana: the problem isn't that hse inputs read(not at all, quite the opposite, that's her saving grace) nor that the combos are too long. THE PROBLEM is that unlike margit who can reliably punished withing his own combos as long as you know where and when to roll, rellana's mid-combo punishes require most of the time time either ai manipulation to just X attacks or pretty good unlocked strafing, with iirc only one or two attacks being the exception. which for a boss like radahn or midra who are one a secret boss and the other the final boss, i could get... but rellana is an early dlc optional boss without even a cutscene, she's no malenia or placidusax, she's no alonne, she's no NK. the other saving grace you get is her immense weakness to lightning but that doesn't help the fact that you have only 3 ways of making rellana a truly fun fight: 1: parrying 2: deflect hardtear 3: unlocked strafing to manipulate the ai in doing mostly the safer attacks or attacks in ways where you can punish mid combo where normally you wouldn't be able to, or in the best case, dodging some of her attacks to give you the window of time to do fast charged R2s like the rapier. and while i do believe the third is a fundamental part of being a *good* (like, good good, very good) player in these games, the former two are... one almost unnecessary and shoehorned in(what if you have a 2-handed weapon?) and the second something you gotta try just cause the game gave it to you IF you killed the respect furnace golem. imho rellana had the POTENTIAL of being a great boss, either by making some of the hitboxes of the attacks skinnier so you could more easlly strafe them/rolle early or by giving her just an extra frame or two of recovery between attacks. (see the phase switch moon slashes which can be dodge by just sticking to her) that's literally all that she needed to be good, instead it's like fighting 2h shamshir user with sword dance or rot star fist while you barely have poise, it's oppressive in the not-so-fun way where you only have to play in certain ways to make it fun, despite being able to defeat her in other ways, ways that are however either wildly inefficient or, imho, not fun.
Maybe marika shedded her snake self in that trailer for her new golden order and explains the snake connections of melina(gloam eyed queen) and messmer
Great discussion… and you’ve gotta do another one with Saint… that last part, where saint said he likes the lore side.. and you kept going, but was running g out of time, man that was such a great listen in itself 😁
The chop chop scizor cut is the easyest way to deflect counter radhan, also gets you the max deflect tear bonus, you just have to be very close to him when he scizzors, that way he does not throw you back
Igon's voice absolutely is the highlight of the DLC, but I also want to give a shoutout to Ainsbach saying "Can _I_ ask a favour of _you?_ " It just works so well you can really hear the emphasis and how its the reversal of what he just said, about how he could not serve a lord to whom he can offer no favours. Also shoutout to Needle Knight Leda with "I am sorry... for speaking to you as if you were a compatriot."
I've been loving 2v2s and 3v3s in the arena because you get your physick and respawn when you die so it's perfect for the deflecting tear and testing other new tears
People rag on invasions because they don't like losing to another person, it is that simple. It's just like in every other game that has multiplayer, It hurts the ego in a way losing to PvE doesn't. The level of rage that Artosis used to channel when losing a game to a Protoss is legendary; and that's - as the kids say - consentual pvp. That's just how human nature is. People love pvp, people love invasion, but people hate losing, and so they go out of their way to try to make elaborate allegories or hyperboles to cope.
hosts aren't queing up to play pvp, they are being forced to. invaders could que up in arena and lose cause they aren't good at the game (their ego is hurt) so they invade other people, because of how damage formula in pvp works, minmaxing a character (stats and buffs) results in them dealing x3 the damage the casual stat spread host does. usually running with a oneshot l2 at the ready, then they complain about ganks being unfair(seriously why can you turn off taunters tongue AND summon blues c'mon fromsoft??) like they themselves aren't at an advantage 99% of the invasions when they could go to arena for a fair fight. but they hate losing so they go out of their way to try to make elaborate allegories or hyperboles to cope why its ok to invade people who have less experience in pvp and worse stats most of the time who never wanted to fight in the first place or even know how.
About From and Bandai Namco actually listening to player feedback, both the second dragonslayer armor fight/dragonslayer armor set as well as ornstein's helm finally having the red plume were the result of a couple of requests given to a namco rep in the ds3 subreddit two months or so before the dlc's release.
With regard to the deflecting hardtear, I really think all soulslike games going forward should have a Sekiro-like perfect guard mechanic. Lies of P is a good indicator of that imo, I think it is a really good mechanic because it allows the player to accomplish something while playing defensively, making the combat more engaging. With the basic playstyle of "dodge until you get an opening to attack" bosses with long combos wind up feeling kind of unsatisfying to fight in many cases, because they are literally stalling your progress in the fight by constantly attacking, whereas perfect guarding gives you incentive to focus on the boss's attacks instead of just anticipating your own chance to attack. It's one of the reasons why parrying is satisfying, but the issue with parrying is that if you do it well, you don't wind up even seeing the full combo because it always interrupts their attack and either staggers them or sets them back to neutral. On a related note, I also think it would be great if soulslike games had a mechanic that rewards the player for successful dodges. It would be equally cool to a perfect guard mechanic if every time you d through an enemy attack, it gave a stacking buff to the dmg of your next attack that resets if you get hit or something of that nature, so that if you successfully dodged a 5-attack combo, you could chunk the boss's hp with a counter attack, so that you could deal more dmg by fully engaging with the boss mechanics than you would if you just traded hits and were greedy.
The difficulty discussion boils down to elden ring’s mass popularity and people who aren’t used to fromsoft games, and dogmatic fanboys who wanna play the game like it’s dark souls even though they had two years to figure out it’s fucking not
It is dark souls, the base combat is literally the same Shield on left, weapon on right, toggle spells and press R1 to cast them Bloodborne was different at a base level, no shields, full on dodging and everyone got a ranged weapon Same with Sekiro, or Armored core ER is literally dark souls with just jumping and crouching added in
I think we as fans are so used to fromsoftware we expect the difference in difficulty from base game to DLC because we all know how busted the DLC always is. They are new so they are not used to it and just don’t understand it’s always like this lol.
@@Sohelanthropusno it’s not. Elden Ring's combat is revolutionary in gaming. There is a reason it has been a 10/10 GOTY for 3 years in a row. Comparing ER to DS1-3 is like saying you didn’t play those games, or wear 10 inch deep rose tinted glasses. Sad!
@@youtubeenjoyer1743What are you on about??? Elden Ring is extremely similar to DS1-3. The only notable combat differences between the Dark Souls trilogy and Elden Ring are the Sekiro posture system and the prevalence/importance of the ashes of war. Not much is different.
That last bit of lore detoxing is so accurate. I’ve been having fun making all these big webs of lore connections based off what we got from the dlc. And every time someone in the discussion thread will be in complete denial since their headcannon isn’t up to date anymore. It’s fine to be wrong guys, (believe me I know how it feels) we just gotta fit the puzzle pieces together in a different way. That’s the fun of it, especially before the lore connections are set in stone by a lore master. Every bit of brainstorming helps.
The dlc was great, but there was too much empty space with too little to find. The areas were just as vast as main game areas, but with no catacombs' no ash of war scarabs, very few field bosses etc. There were like huge streches of land that only contained an item like a Marika's blessing or something. Other than that amazing dlc, incredible bosses, very atmospheric, great npc interactions and really cool weapons.
Totally agree. Cerulean coast and red flower area took a long time for how little there was. There were also lots of small areas that took 10-15 minutes to explore with nothing but a cookbook at the end. Loved the dlc but man, I miss having a more linear FS experience wherein all content is legacy dungeon quality.
@@Tstorm731 Yeah, personally i really like the cook books, I tend to use the crafting quite a bit. I like the fantasy of having absoloutly no magic but being able to do pretty much anything with some equipment and prepartion. But it would at least be nice to have a unique enemy in some way that drops the book or something. I feel like the Dlc could have been amazing if it was build more like a DS3 dlc rather than a mini Elden ring that just doesnt have as much density of content. I think the fact that the Jagged peak is like the best area overall proves it, the most linear and crafted area of them all, that includes a completely unique enviroment, linear bosses escalation, an npc storyline and even some unique enviromental hazzards. It was so good, compare that to like Rauh ruins or something, there is no comparison, nothing memorable about that area, despite also having a similar amount of content, but its just a big wide land mass, no direction, just circling the entire thing as close to the edges to make sure you didnt miss anything... again.
Rellana's swords are exactly what Saint was talking about last time on the podcast. It's just a quality weapon, that requires a little int and fai. Like, that had never occurred to me until Saint talked about that and I've been loving those things on my quality build! But y'all don't like them? My only real complaint is that you can put Rellana's in your offhand and and you get the straight sword moveset but can't power stance it with other straight swords. I just think it would be so cool to easily swap between the two ps movesets with just "two" weapons equipped.
There is a lore video by ProfOrProf. It’s called "What is the Scadutree?" I don’t know if you’ve seen it but, I highly recommend it. It’s actually fucking nuts!
<a href="#" class="seekto" data-time="130">2:10</a>:28 pretty sure you can skip liurnia buy killing godrick, radahn (for shardbearers to acces leyndell) and then valliant gargoyles and then fia's champs and use the teleporter there. you still need to use the tower of return (to activate a grace to start radahn festival), but it circumvents the need for multiplayer.
