Elden Ring (Zero Punctuation) 

This week on Zero Punctuation, Yahtzee reviewed Horizon Forbidden West. www.escapistmagazine.com/horizon-forbidden-west-zero-punctuation/ Watch it early on RU-vid and support our content via RU-vid Memberships for just $2/month. ru-vid.com/show-UCqg5FCR7NrpvlBWMXdt-5Vgjoin

If the next few games he reviews are short games we know he's trying to play Elden Ring again

"Spectacular backdrops and droptacular backstabs." Pure poetry

Yahtzee's artful slasher depiction of a FromSoft boss is...remarkably accurate.

I was dying at the reference to putting a ton of fingers in pages in a choose your own adventure book. I did that all the time as a kid!

For once, it's his job's deadline that actually does him in from having fun with the game. Never seen that happen before.

Holy shit this new "jump" technology they invented is the best thing ever. Seriously though there was nothing worse thant the "platforming" in Dark Souls. The Jump button is a godsend

In defense of the crafting system, it's mostly been implemented to replace needing to purchase four billion arrows in order to actually play a bow based character. Having a truly infinite supply of consumable items means you can fully incorporate them into your build, instead of endlessly holding onto a piece of grass in case you really need the extra stamina for Four Kings.

"let's roll back a bit" is probably one of the funnier Yahtzee jokes I can remember for a while.

I recall part of the original _Dark Souls_ charm was that if _one_ area was feeding you your own teeth, you could leave it for a while and try a _different_ one. Hardly surprising, then, that the way to improve upon that feature is for _literally every direction_ to be a different area -- I was already Level 50 by the time I remembered I had a castle to storm, for all the _fun_ I was having exploring.

I love that the first "mandatory" boss is designed to not be the first boss you should fight. Its so tough it kicks your ass until you decide to go explore and fight other enemies

The scale of the game is mind-blowing. I visited several areas (sometimes involuntarily) and realized how massive this game is. My jaw is still on the floor. About 24 hours in and still hanging around Limgrave area, can't stop scanning every inch of the map. The marriage of Souls and Open World is definitely a happy one.

Can't believe he did a review after being only like 2% in. Missed that incredible fight against the severed breast of the unholy shelf.

To be fair, I enjoyed the first phase due to the fantasy of me being like anakin and take on the younglings in coruscant.

Fromsofts answer to the roll behind smack the boss on the ass was to add an additional attack luring you into a false sense of security. But what really fools you is if you are not in range of that extra attack the AI won't do it, luring you into a bigger false sense of security since you think "that's the end of that attack combo I can sneak some damage in when he does that attack animation again".

"I'm here to serve up a footlong of sizzling meaty death to this MOON-y cow" - I see what you did there *Wink*

Would honestly love a second review of this from Yahtzee after he finishes the game

Elden Ring made me realize I'd brick wall an area meant to be explored 3/5ths of the way through the game for a red head with a questline that can only be described as golden needle in a scarlet rot poison swamp haystack.

Ah yes, good old Rennala phase 2. Spend a couple minutes wailing on some helpless mooks, enter the second phase and get the actual fucking Moon dropped on your head.

Rennala’s boss arena is amazing with the stars and full moon.

To be honest I thought the horse not being allowed into castles and dungeons was intended as a loving tribute to Yoshi's debut in Super Mario World where he had to wait by the door for no adequately explained reason.

Nailed that boss fight on the head. "Cool. Finally done with that slog... wait, what? YOU DIED. Wait, WHAT?!"

When I first fought Margit, I immediately said "oh fuck that" and I picked a random direction on the map and just went. 2 hours later I was underground and fighting a giant spiritual moose. Never change Fromsoft.

I actually can’t believe how much i’m loving this game. I get the usual butt munching difficulty, with the freedom of ignoring every mandatory boss. This is beautiful!

"Serve up a sizzling footlong of meaty death to this moony cow!" Could not stop laughing, love the writing for these reviews.

Yahtzee the Maidenless 🕯️

Lmao me and my mates are in our 40s and the phrase "spazzing the fuck out" has been used a LOT during our playthrough spot on.

I'm just glad that elden ring has stuff in all parts of its massive map, unlike a lot of "open worlds" where it's just some empty space to make it seem bigger. And then there is an entire underground...

Ah, hearing my brother play this game has been COLORFUL to say the least, glad you all are having fun!

Over the past week I watched most my friends play Elden Ring seeing one of them reminisce on the various planter and parking-lot-concrecte-ball shaped monsters as he rode along the cliffside to go and kill what I can only describe as a Castle Greyskull playset mounted on top of the gonarch from half-life had a weird charm to it

I find very few games get the crafting elements right. To my mind you need to get a few things right that most AAA games don't understand. First, the stuff you craft needs to be blatantly better than the junk you find lying around. Second, it needs to be flexible enough to make you feel smart when you make some crafting combination and it works. Third, don't make crafting resources feel like dirt cheap or failing that. Make good crafting materials exist along side a lot of bad ones so you feel you need to collect them in case they might be just what you need to turn you whatever into a boss killing whatever.

I share his sentiment with Renalla. A fight that could’ve been great if it weren’t for the first phase. Wasn’t difficult, just tedious. Like running up to Radhan.

Gonna play Yahtzee bingo (haven't watched it yet): - Mentions his love of Dark Souls - Mentions the need to test yourself against bosses til you see a red mist - Laments the fact it's gone open world like everything else - Praises the exploration being similar to BotW - Laments the need for *crafting* - Gives it a pretty positive review, even if he somewhat thinks it's not as good as Dark Souls

I can't wait for a year to hear him gush over this game

I'm so glad he brought up how the bosses in From Soft games lately have boiled down to "boss flails their arms around like a crazy person", because it's so annoying to deal with.

Yahtzee Forgot To Talk About The Big Scary Bears That Come Out Of Nowhere

It is my first experience with Souls like games. And i must say turning into farmhouse chutney 5000 times before i progress would be tedious and dull if it wernt for the fact that it feels so rewarding when you learn how to get past the enemy and get the ntoficiation enemy felled.

The line about keeping your fingers in Choose Your Own Adventure books is so specific and yet relatable, this is why I love Zero Punctuation

Pretty much agree, but I would note that doing side content and finding treasure almost always gets you unique loot (weapons, ashes of war, etc) crafting materials are instead usually littered about, so it's not as bad as it sounds. Crafting is actually pretty useful but I ignored it anyway. And lol, poor Yahtz has a long long way to go before he's done.

As a fellow Souls vet, I’m glad to see that Yahtzee also found some of these bosses more difficult than previous ones. There are a handful of late-game fights that will make you feel like you’re losing your edge. Some of these enemies feel like they were designed for Bloodborne, but they’re in a markedly slower and more methodical Souls game. Still freaking love Elden Ring though, it’s possibly my new favorite game of all time.

RIP Zero Punctuation

It is kinda sad that Yahtzee had to stop at that point, since it was where things start to open up lore wise. Which is kinda ironic even more since it tells me that he didn't get caught by the various map teleport traps that would have challenged his Dark Souls trained instincts more......

The moment where I first went behind Stormveil Castle and saw the fog lifting to reveal Liurna of the Lakes was definitely a “wow” moment.

The first time I fought that boss with the phase 1 shield I was playing with a friend, and there was no shield or special minions generating the shield... But she was still invincible. With all of the actual fight mechanics missing, we resorted to experimentation and eventually discovered that she wasn't immune to status effects, so we killed her via my mate's bleed spell (until he quickly ran out of magic flasks) and the tiny tick damage from my one black flame spell. A literal 20 minutes later we got her down, discovered phase 2 and had our flask-less faces beaten in. Attempt 2 and the mechanic of the shield and minions was glaringly obvious because they hadn't been there when we were scouring the arena for clues on the previous attempt. Oh, then when we did it in my friend's world he died on phase 2 and respawned INSIDE the boss room with all the enemies calmly staring at him. I think it genuinely freaked him out a little based on how glad he seemed that he could fast-travel out.

One of my favorite moments so far was the dragon in Limgrave, got tired of banging my head against Margit's wall and went exploring, found some ruins and went a killin', chose a direction, rode that way, and got sat on by a fucking dragon, it was great. Also love the giant's pulling the cart up to the church ruins, spent a good couple minutes trailing the thing, I love the touches like that, as far as I can tell nothing really happens, but it goes a long way in making it feel like a massive world, I really love the way soulsborne games make you feel small, like none of the enemies are waiting there to kill you, you're just another moving part in a big sprawling world and it's sick

God! I haven't seen a Zero Punctuation video in YEARS! It's good to hear Yahtzee ramble on again and hilarious as always. Was not expecting the sass at the end though. A good little relevant jab and wholely welcome.

4:57 Tee Hee, "Moony Cow"... That fits so well :P

I was initially annoyed to see that there was a crafting system but then I realized cracked pots recharge after use and basically every component has a grace point somewhere that makes it easy to farm. I can now actually have a limitless supply of crystal throwing knives and firebombs without having to spend time farming souls and it's no longer just for late game only. I can now use all my favorite items and don't have to just horde them for pvp. My biggest fear was I was going to just be bored out of my mind. Breath of the Wild is nice to look at but so boring to play. ER is incredibly dense and its average quality is so high, I still enjoy Limgrave when playing new characters.

If Yahtzee keeps playing I think what he will appreciate more is just how big and grandiose much of the game feels, even compared to previous entries. Dark Souls has always been about you, some small insect, taking on a grand, powerful god, but are only able to do so because they have decayed and rotted. Yes, the first gimmick boss was a bit of a let down in gameplay, but the other two big boss gimmicks are fantastic and really make you feel the weight of how powerful they were in their primes, especially because they are still quite challenging.

Didn’t say it’s a 10/10 instant classic flawless game that’s already defined the future of gaming L + Ratio + Maidenless + Touch Grace

one thing i appreciate about crafting. because (for common items) the resources are quite plentiful, but you can only carry a maximum amount and can't craft in combat. this is one of the first times i actually used consumable items in a souls game. as one who doesn't like to look up the wiki for every boss's weakness... i have beaten entire games without using firebombs because "oh no, i might need these on a later mob and i don't want to farm endless souls to buy more when those souls could instead go to more stats" because you generally have the materials for lots, but can only use a few at a time, that actually encouraged me to use the items instead of hording them incessantly. so at the very least i appreciated that. because now i can actually test out "does this thing take more from fire?" without feeling like i've permanently lost my chance to use one of these annoyingly uncommon items on a boss that REALLY needs it

"Boy howdy I wish I could fucking die" got my biggest belly laughs this week. Well done, as ever, yahtz

Jumping attacks are definitely my go-to. I finally found a long enough weapon to use while on Torrent, so I can actually hit whatever I'm running at. When I had just my scimitars and a flail I couldn't hit shit until I was basically standing on whatever I wanted to hit; and then that usually resulted in me getting stunlocked to death. Yay. Torrent got despawned when I was clearing an area, but then I saw I could summon him again. I summoned him except he didn't appear. I was sitting on an invisible horned horse for a bit until I spontaneously died. That was fun... I didn't return to that area (trying to clear out the enemies around that first traveling caravan thing) after that, but it's on my list now that I've leveled up a bit more. I also just need to sit and mark out places of interest on the map, because I keep getting sidetracked on my way to a specific location and then I forget what I was originally setting out to do. I'm 9 hours in and have done only the first mandatory boss. I've done 3 small, pretty easy dungeon bosses (I guess it's technically 4, but I'm not going to spoil it for anyone who hasn't found it yet) and whole lot of wandering around avoiding anything bigger than me. I guess I should try to fight the guys also on horses, as well as those massive trolls. As for the shield, I'm just two-handing my twinblade at this point and haven't equipped my shield in ages. I do keep forgetting that in Elden Ring and Dark Souls 3 I can't beat my health back out of whatever took it. Although I did learn that there's an ash of war that gives players that ability, so I'll be hunting that down asap. The tutorial reminds me of the starting asylum area in Dark Souls in that it's deceptively easy. I went through it like it was nothing and then was swiftly corrected as soon as I started exploring Limgrave properly.

3:19 i have that workbench, harbor freight for like 100 bucks. solid bench, nice drawers, has a power strip on the side. doesnt come with the hooks for the board though, those are seperate. does come with a nice little light though.

Bloody Slash, just melts everything moon lady boss included. It's one of the "Guds" that you can "Git." Maybe even disappointingly good, in that I'm disappointed in myself for just crushing my enemies. Hahaha

Fun trivia fact: this is the first Zero Punctuation where Yahtzee uses the word "yeet." Unironically even.

i actually love how the intro and outro rebind me so much of early youtube with metal and basic slideshow transitions. Never change, Escapist

The "thought I picked up 2 smithing stones" thing happened to me as well, super annoying.

"Spectacular backdrop and droptacular backstab" Genius

5:06 that hit hard

I think this video has my favourite visuals of any review. The "jump heavy attack" section caused me to choke with laughter.

2 phase bosses are cool, but when every boss has 2 phases. It really starts to grind on you. One of my least favorite bosses in Dark Souls 3 was Lady Freya. She wasn't a hard boss by any means, but when I have to patiently wait out phase 1 and phase 2 just to attempt the actual fight part of the fight, it just feels like a waste of my time.

2:25 Ah yes, the ol' Lego Star Wars strat. Spamming the brokenly OP jumping ground slam. You can't beat the classics, I suppose!

Dang I’m curious to hear his thoughts once he gets farther because it sounds like he barely scratched the surface if he only made it to Raya Lucaria by the time of this review

I know a lot of people are having issues running it on their systems, and they’re right to want those issues addressed (though, to be clear, I’m over 60 hours in at this point and I’ve yet to encounter any problems of that nature), and as far as the crafting mechanic goes, I agree that it’s probably the game’s most extraneous feature; 95% of the time I’m just using it to make more arrows because it’s more convenient to use the massive pile of animal bones I’m practically suffocating under than warping back to a merchant to spend runes on a perpetually diminishing resource. Other than those two points, however, more than any other FromSoft game I’ve played (save perhaps Bloodborne), Elden Ring has completely blown every expectation I had out of the water. I’ve fallen in love with this game _so damn hard_ and I cannot recommend it enough, regardless of whether you’re a Souls veteran or a series newcomer.

This review begs for a follow up in the future. It seems like there is still so much to talk about.

The summons can be so OP during certain boss fights, whenever they do damage the boss gets distracted and focusses on them, so you have free reign to get 5 or more hits in which is good

I feel ya on the Moon Lady boss slog. But then I realised that you can hear the minions you need to attack directionally and it's usually accompanied by a slew of books heading in your direction from the daft cow too.

i played this game since it came out and I was initially hooked to it because it was pretty fun. but having beaten the game and doing most of the content, i'm somewhat lukewarm on the game. at a certain point, the game became a slog and I just wanted to finish it asap. in the initial week of playing the game I was like "i'm going to do all the mini-dungeons and whatnot." to now "I can't be assed to get the rest of the endings." no idea why. the world is great, the combat is nice. i really like that you can change the angle of your attack if the enemy moves so you don't whiff a mad slow attack. for what it's worth, I cruised through the game using a +24 dismounter and +10 bloodhound fang. the OP dex bleed stuff, but the OP part of bloodhound fang is it's skill. straight up stuns everything and does a ton of damage. the dismounter wasn't exactly necessary, but I did enjoy jump attack powerstancing so I just kept it since it helped me beat a certain bullshit boss. all in all, I would certainly recommend this game, but pace yourself cuz you might get burn out like I did and just want to get through with it. I'll probably play it again some months from now.

The "it's a Fromsoft Soulsy game therefore good" is the truest thing he's ever said lmao

4:07 I guess I'm not the only one who did that lol.

Rennala ain't random. It's the one with the golden aura. That's throwing books at you. And singing, just to give you an audio cue if it's behind a bookshelf somewhere.

This has to be one of my favorite ZP's in a long time. I only really played Bloodborne so this game was like a breath of fresh air. The enemies that flail around randomly really are just terrible.

Jump attacks are a godsend but also a curse, I leeroy jenkins my way into unstunnable enemies far more than I should

So I feel this video should have been longer, because theres a number of things worth talking about. The most important perhaps being the small litany of amateur dev mistakes that were made, that were seemingly never made in previous souls titles. And secondly, the difficulty, which Yahtz touched on. With regards to mistakes, I think the most important are the UI, and the failure to respect player choice in a number of instances. UI: The intrusive menu prompts are terrible. The naming conventions for upgrade materials was likewise terrible, and I'm glad Yahtz touched on that. Now, lets remind ourselves that Elden Ring allows us to chug as much Sunny D as we want, but the moment we want to resurrect our horse, it suddenly gives a shit, and tosses us a menu prompt about whether we want to lose one crimson flask charge to get our horse back, which we have to navigate and respond to, while we're in the middle of combat. Look personally, I just want my horse back so I don't die, it doesn't matter how much OJ I have if I'm dead. Player choice: You can turn Melina's accord down, which you could be forgiven for assuming would set you on a more difficult path, without torrent, and possibly leveling, which would change the later story the game somewhat, or at least allow you to progress normally-ish. However no, about halfway through, the game forces you to accept the accord, and won't allow you to progress further once you reach the Lyndell. Why bother giving the player the choice at all then, if the story is going to force the player back onto the rails eventually? The difficulty: It's strange. Elden Ring strives to be a middle ground between a challenge for vets, and an easier souls challenge for new players. Positional rolling is now extremely important, especially for the later bosses, the chess maneuvering roll dodges which are required to not be hit bosses are rarely intuitive and are muscle memory intensive. But of course, players can always just use a 100% physical resist tower shield in order to help mitigate the need to use the dodge roll. And this being an "open world" means that players can go somewhere else level up and come back to a harder challenge later, presumably with all their friends. And if they're stuck in offline mode, they can use their STANDS to help them through.

I enjoyed the game so much more when I switched from pursuing the main plot to just exploring. Not only was discovering hidden enemies and treasure much more fun and rewarding than throwing myself endlessly at Margit, the You-Can-Catch-These-Hands Man. But, by the time I was satisfied with my exploring, I came back and trounced the same bosses that had given me so much trouble before.

I have never been able to get into Souls games and am pretty terrible at them, but I am still enjoying the game a lot. The fact that you can beat your head on a boss for hours and just decide to go do other stuff when you get too frustrated is a god send. And it certainly doesn't hurt that it is quite possibly the best looking game ever made.

Over years you slowly learn how much Yahtzee likes a game is by how much he nickpicks it.

re: getting off the horse to go inside the castle - Brings to mind Super Mario World, where you get that little cutscene of hopping off Yoshi and leaving him outside castles and ghost houses

Loved the casual Periphery reference 🤣

When you talked about the horse going away indoors, I was expecting a professor oak joke about a time and place for everything

Some of the environments and enemy designs made me realize I want FromSoft to make a genuine horror game, maybe psychological or survival horror Edit- We ride together we die together, Oleg for life

I’ve noticed a lot of mini bosses decide to take the witch of hemwick elective in that you aren’t threatening yourself yet you can summon dudes that range from actual threat to obstacles that try your patience. Thumbs up for the really cool quest line that forces to fight at my current time of playing two of these guys.

defensw of the crafting system: if you come across one of the 20 poison swamps you can now immediately craft an antidote (if you have the recepie, that is)

By Yahtzee standards, this is what we call "glowing praise"

Yes! Soneone else who discovered the glory of jump attacks! Watching so many other people play the game and not abusing the jump attack amused me somewhat hah. But, glad to see Yahtzee think Elden Ring is a nice continuation and evolution of the Dark Souls formula. Can't wait to see what Fromsoft do next, although I would be down for another game like Sekiro, if only because the aesthetic and game design REALLY sucked me in there.

This was a very funny review. I literally spat out my water. Thank you yahtz. Also very thorough overview of what we see as the first few hours at least

I remember watching yahtzees reviews when I was just a young lad. Glad to see he's still rocking. Great review!

From watching the review and his post game streams, he missed most of the first zones things, let alone the rest of the game. It is doubtful he had even seen Radahn. I think the game world feels large rather than is large. I was overwhelmed by Limgrave at first as a Souls fan, but after a few days of exploration, it really doesn't feel that large, especially because of fast travel. What still feels overwhelming is the sprawling dungeons. Reaching areas like lake of rot and then the rest of it, or Deeprooth Depths felt like a real adventure. Not just that, because of the ability to jump on horse and on foot, a lot of secretive location that probably just some upgrade materials compels me to seek them out, hoping to find something rare. Verticality adds a lot of layers to locations, and makes the world really feels gigantic, even if physically they are not that large nor intricate. Raya Lucaria is probably comparable to the Duke's archive, but because of the ability to jump, leaping from ledges to other areas, exploring Raya Lucaria takes a lot longer than the Duke's archive, outside of combat. I can say the same to Stormveil and the rest. Reaching the area boss wouldn't take very long, but to explore the entire place is an entire different matter. I think a lesson for copycats like Darksiders is to give the player an overview of the area more often. Don't box them into a series of rooms like a 2D MetroidVania. Even 2D MetroidVania played with it with high ceilings and paths on top of paths. For 3D, it is vital to give the player a perspective of the entire area's layout, that gives the player's an idea about the scale of the area they are exploring, as well as a good grasp of the layout, that they don't have to have a map to traverse. This is why "dungeons" in God of War, Zelda, Souls games are so easily memorable, and almost never needed a map to explore. Darksiders did environmental design better in 1, for some reason, and got progressively worse. It is also better if the environment feels natural, deceptively so would be fine. Continuing with what Yahtze described as '"making the environment first before figuring out how to traverse it", Elden Ring environment provides ample vantage points for the players to have a clear view of what they are about to conquer. It doesn't highlight ledges that you can jump on top of railings and drop down, but it makes no attempt to hide it. It entices the player with shiny loots to draw attention to ledges. That makes exploration more satisfying, because you feel like you discover something when it is the game designer that points them there. All of this makes Elden Ring feels larger than it actually is, and such a memorable experience. It's something very simple, but none of the other studios seem interested in imitating. They would rather imitate the duelling combat, or dropping currency on death.

I'm glad someone's pointed out how shit a lot of enemy's attack patterns are. There's no skill in wild aoe swipes that never run out of stamina

Loving that Warren Zevon reference at the end there

man, that part at the beginning, in the perspective of the audience, was really on point

My favorite new feature is mountain climbing adventures. Gotta love how the horse can stand on pretty much any protrusion from a sheer cliff that has even a slightly flat top. It's like he's not even a horse, but some weird horse-sized mountain goat that can jump like he's not carrying a buff idiot wearing enough armor to be classified as main battle tank.

Im earlier than my dodge rolls when fighting Margit

Love the GRRM shot at the end

Nice little Miracle Dad reference in there

If you think it’s hard at first, just wait until endgame areas. Enemies have crap tons of health, do shit tons of damage, and are everywhere. It’s pretty unbalanced.

Some of these two phase fights like the shield dude and especially the ones where the bosses' mate unexpectedly drops in half way through, do get quite tiresome after a while.

1:50 the exact same thing happened to me.

I loved the "Choose Your Own Adventure" mention. I was that kid. lol.