In Defense of Elden Ring Boss Design (RE: Joseph Anderson & LupineOs) 

I have one final message to Joe and Lupine that I will leave in this very long comment. Also, a quick correction to the video. I say that over 90 percent of players did not understand boss mechanics, and while I still believe that to be true it was unfair of me to say since most of the player base are casuals who aren't trying to learn boss mechanics. A better thing to have said is that a very large amount of players who enjoy learning boss mechanics were not able to enjoy bosses in Elden Ring. ---------------------------------- First I’m going to write a message to Joe. Joe says that there are two types of attack warnings in Dark Souls, but this is wrong. There are three. The two types of attack warnings Joe identifies are reactable attacks where you dodge intuitively and delayed attacks where the damage comes out so fast it’s beyond human reaction time so you have to memorize when to dodge after the animation begins. The third type of attack warning are combo extenders. As shown in the video a boss like pontiff will do two specific fire sword swings, and if you are in front of him he will do a quick dagger stab about 100 percent of the time, so when you see him do two reactable fire sword swings you must preemptively roll in anticipation of the dagger stab. Many Elden Ring bosses have similar attacks where you memorize dodge rolls and openings based on the attack pattern. Joe said that Mohg had an unfair flaming claw explosion attack and showed gameplay of phase 2 Mohg jumping into the air, landing, and then using the attack. The thing is, Mohg ALWAYS does an attack after landing if you are close to him, so you must dodge whatever combo/attack he begins after landing to get your opening. Another example that I got wrong in the footage was with phase 2 Morgott's long spinning combo. Morgott spins around midair with both his weapons which is very hard to dodge, but he only does this after his delayed overhead hammer strike, so I should have probably circled left during the hammer strike to get a positioning opening on the Morgott’s spinning attack. If this doesn't work I could also just run away after the overhead hammer strike in anticipation of the spinning attack, and then I can punish that with a jumping heavy. If Joe thinks that this level of memorization is stupid or too hard that is fine, but it’s worth noting that this third type of attack warning exists and is very important in Elden Ring as most bosses will have some combo extenders that you need to memorize. ---------------------------------- The second part of this comment will be directed towards Lupine because I think I already know what his main issue will be with part 1 of the video. If I’m wrong I’m sorry. I say that if you don’t understand how to “solve” a boss’s moveset the only way to significantly alter boss difficulty is by not interacting with most of the boss mechanics. One counter argument to this could be Bloodhound’s step. Of course Bloodhound’s step is so overpowered that it makes the game way too easy just like with magic and hit trading, so you’d have to artificially limit yourself to only using Bloodhound’s step to dodge specific moves that you don’t understand. So yes, if you use the internet to get a game breaking dodge roll and artificially limit yourself to only use it for specific attacks that you don’t want to learn then you can sort of achieve an “easy mode” against certain bosses. I don’t enjoy this approach of having to theory craft a “normal mode” with the internet combined with artificial limitations. That would not give me joy when I beat a boss. I think the game should just teach its mechanics better for the infinitely more rewarding experience of overcoming every boss with the normal dodge roll. Also there are probably a few more items that I didn’t mention in the video that can change boss up movesets like blasphemous claw with Maliketh and parryable bosses. I don’t view this as turning the boss moveset into easy mode, but just as a more difficult form of skipping the boss mechanics. However, if you beat a boss with a combination of learning their actual openings and parrying this isn't true, but if you don't understand how to get openings on an Elden Ring boss and you beat them with only parrying then you are skipping learning the boss moveset. Even if you disagree, parrying only applies to a handful of bosses anyways so it's not too important for the discussion. The point of part 1 in the video is to communicate clearly that there is a large subsect of players like Joe and I who only enjoy Fromsoft bosses when we memorize their movesets and overcome them with minimal hit trading on a melee build. If I cannot do this then I am not having fun.

I love how the proposed fix is just "make it Sekiro"

Can't wait for the 10 hour long response to this video

No one will tell me that waterfowl is fair move from the boss, its bullshit

In Elden Ring, there isn't a "Genichiro" like boss in the early / mid game that acts as a skill/ knowledge check to make sure that the devs and the players are on the same page. You can very easily brute force the early bosses and then you get a wake up call in the end game all of a sudden. I actually think that the last few bosses of ER taught me way more about the game than the starting ones.

One thing I find annoying in Elden Ring when it comes to difficulty is that we have no option to refight the main bosses without playing the whole game again. When I beat certain bosses, I didn't even know how I managed it. But because I couldn't fight them again, I had no option to learn from them further. While it wouldn't teach me how to fight other bosses, getting good at one does teach many necessary mechanics and skills needed to defeat any other boss.

The way a game communicates its mechanics to the player is as important as the actual mechanics .The fact that the bosses only clicked for u after watching a youtube video is a huge problem.

I think the main problem with the bosses is their damage output. If armor had more impact on defense, or bosses just did less damage overall, people would have more fun learning them. They're so mechanically complex that it's weird that most of them will 2-3 shot the player in any gear, and the overwhelming nature of that combination causes most players to just seek an easier way to win instead of take time and learn. I liked learning bosses in previous From games because I could understand the windups better and the bosses didn't kill me in half a second for making one mistake. When every new thing kills you, the learning process becomes tedious.

So, basically: the full light attack combo is there to look pretty because you can never use it because you get 1 sec jump attack windows or else you die. Got it

17:04 In Sekiro they had Hanbei the Undying to help a player understand the mechanics of the game. They could've done that with Elden Ring. I was kinda sad we didn't have a Hanbei esque character.

You know, its actually blowing my mind watching this video because I've put almost 1000 hours into ER and the majority of these attack opportunities you're showing in these boss fights (stuff like simply walking around margit's long cane windup and punishing with a charged heavy) are things I have never done or thought to do in those nearly 1000 hours. I always just wait for an opening and punish, I rarely get that aggressive in fights because I personally could never tell when it was safe to do so. And when bosses do like 50-70% of your HP bar in one attack, even when you're level 130 with 60 vigor (maliketh) it really discourages experimentation and creates a gigantic aversion to risk.

I would hate a game that narrows the ability to beat the bosses down to just stance breaks. I think the gauntlet training idea is good, but lets not remove the ability to win in multiple ways.

19:10 I physically scrunched my face when you said malenia’s attacks can be jumped over. I had never attempted to jump over any of her attacks because it doesn’t look possible. I’ve fought her hundreds of times as well. I think overall the game does not encourage jumping over attacks to avoid being hit. And I hate how it seems like they ramp this up disproportionately at the end few bosses of the game.

Really interesting analysis, though I will say that you are seriously undermining the game's breadth of enjoyment by limiting yourself to this posture break strategy. Yeah, it's still fun and viable, but man, it's barely scratching the surface of what is possible. I have played Elden Ring for 900+ hours. I have killed every major boss 40 times each, and Malenia even more using a separate save slot. And I've done so using almost every style of weapon/magic combination I could think of. Spears, Swords, Greatswords, Sorcery and Scythe, Sorcery only, Incantations only, Fire incantations only, Carian Sword sorceries only, whips, flails, claws, fists, The Black Knife only, Dual daggers, Dual status rapiers, ice weapon and fire weapon, Shield only (literally only a greatshield, no actual weapons!)... I could go on and on and on. The problem with your posture focused suggestion is that it limits you to a pretty small subsection of weapons with charged heavy attacks quick enough to capitalize on the strategy. But there are TONS of amazing weapons that can't utilize that system - like whips, which literally can't critical hit or backstab - that are nevertheless incredibly fun to fight with. Even this analysis, while helpful, is so much more narrow than what the game has available. I'm 40 playthroughs deep, and still haven't even come close to finishing all the experimental builds I want to try!

I'd disagree about having melee weapons dealing less damage and crits dealing more damage. I'd just argue for Crits dealing more damage. I felt in many instances that the Crits were not worth it for the damage dealt to the boss. In your one hit before I-Frames, I just found it infinitely more appealing to hit them non-critically while they were stunned.

I think another big issue with how the game is designed is with presentation in general aside from the lack of jumpable indicators or posture. Dark souls is already something a lot of people have played or watched so i think its totally fair to assume the usual way of approaching boss mechanics would work when everything from the animation to the UI is almost the exact same as ds3 and basically doesnt differentiate itself at all like sekiro does with the prosthetics and obvious pushes for deflects. Also I think the bosses having so much tracking makes people realizing positioning was this important really unreasonable for a game like this. Old monster hunter games for example were entirely position dodging almost because of the super low s but they usually had fairly bad tracking on most attacks to make it obvious to players that you're supposed to just be in the right spots rather than dodging with s or whatever else. I think positioning and baiting super specific combo extenders also feels a lot more like a scuffed solution to the hyper aggro tracking combos than if they just made it an explicit mechanic like sekiro so i think its fair for joe to not realize baiting reactions out is even consistent. Especially with how many bosses are honestly gonna die before you learn them well enough to see that

Watching people fight certain bosses really helped me to learn how to dodge certain moves.

I think a big part of it is that the rhythm is different to what Souls Vets are used to. With Elden Ring as my first FromSoft game and after hearing so many complaints about the Fire Giant, I was pleasantly surprised with how easy he was to no-hit. Maybe there's an aspect of approaching it without already having an idea in your head as to how things should go.

Quick defense of Margit as a teaching tool: 1) He has weak enough posture that you will stagger him, even unintentionally, and see the benefit 2) Most of his moves, including tricky ones like the spectral knife, do tiny damage 3) Really obvious difference between left and right hand weapons, so you notice that dodging to different sides gets different results

49:00 That's not proof that the boss design is goated, it's proof that you've suffered so much that you've convinced yourself that you were in the wrong all this time. You make a lot of good points about the Sekiro playstyle not being taught correctly, but this game is very clearly intended to be played in various different ways, not just the one where you posture break the bosses in a perfect god-like flow state. Bosses should be designed in a manner where the playstyle you advocate for is still satisfying and fun to pull off, but not to the point where anyone who doesn't do confine to jumping attacks and crits gets punished for how they prefer to do things. But there 100% should be a posture bar or something, stance is way more important in this game than any of the souls games.

I also loved a bunch of the bosses in Elden Ring that people had frustrations with, I didn’t even hate Godskin Duo. I beat almost every boss in the game, but gave up on Elden Beast after several times of getting into melee range, starting my attack (played the whole game using the Zweihander, wasnt about to switch to something faster) & having it run away (or just have the idle swaying motion take it out of reach) before my animation could finish. The same thing would happen to me with many of the giant monster bosses in the game. That and the the camera being the actual most difficult enemy. FromSoft really needs to improve their camera for those huge, fast bosses.

This is the only defense of Elden Ring's bosses I've enjoyed watching. Opposed to the condescending video this one replies to, this one is fair to people who don't enjoy the boss mechanics while also explaining something I never figured out on my own, making me want to reevaluate what I originally thought of the game's boss design. Good stuff.

The problem for me is that the puzzle of figuring out the bosses is much longer than in previous games. And it's to the point where they feel like they're not intended to be beaten without trading hits whereas in previous games that wasn't the case. For me it took a no-leveling run with a bad weapon to properly learn how to deal with Morgott, Maliketh phase 1, and Malenia without face-tanking through some attacks. I simply don't like that. It made my first experience tedious and annoying and even though I have fun fighting those bosses now, I think the bosses overall fail since they encourage really boring playstyles on a first run. I have done every souls game multiple times with stupid restrictions, but even breezing past Orphan of Kos on multiple challenge runs didn't give me a good process for dealing with the Elden Ring bosses. I'm a player who loves playing these games on what you call hard mode, but for the first time ever I picked up the golden halberd and just jump attacked my way through literally the whole game. The rhythm and boss design follow such a different philosophy that my experience was very negative because the skills and learning process didn't transfer. Simply due to hundreds of hours of playtime in challenge runs I'd say I'm better at these games than most souls veterans, and if my experience annoyed me that much it must've been worse for an "average" souls vet. Bosses should be fun for average players on their first run, and Elden Ring's bosses simply aren't. As incredible as it is to figure out that sprinting into waterfowl dance or Maliketh phase 1's double swipe is the way to avoid damage, that is simply not something that an average player will figure out on their first playthrough. Put that shit behind a new moveset in NG+ or something, that would be such a fun surprise in a second run through the game and it feels unfair the first time.

You should link lupine’s response video in the pinned comment so that more people can see it.

Absolutely hilarious watching this after the DLC where posture breaking bosses takes so long that it’s not as reliable

I never really thought of the Elden Beasts reveal like that. The whole game (to me at least) made it sound like Marika/Radagon was the God that needed killing as the game hypes up the Elden Ring itself as some kind of all-powerful artifact that is held by the Elden Lord. It literally can control life and death and rewrote how death works for Marika. Only when the game mentions how Marika was punished for the shattering did I think of something more being behind the Elden Ring, after all who could punish someone with all of that power? But it felt like there was too little on what that could be for me to form an idea until I saw it. It's also not the first time has used these kinds of higher power type creatures, just look at bloodborne and all of its Lovecraftian concepts. Even the flame at the core of Dark souls could be seen in the same light as some higher power of questionable origin.

Bro your vids are so well spoken and thought out every time. When nobody else can put my thoughts into words, my boy Feeble King has my back covered

Your criticism pretty much sums up my thoughts after watching Lupine's video. His response is valid, but ER does a terrible job at teaching the player these nessecary insights. Margit doesnt teach any boss mechanics to most players, he teaches you to explore the world and come back stronger. I remember using charged heavies and guard counters excessively in the first 5 hours and then discarding them because they didnt feel relevant enough. Light spam is just safer and looking to posture break is a guessing game. I didnt even think about using the jump to dodge attacks (I didnt even think about the jump warning in Sekiro until now but that change would be great), a lot of jump sensitive attacks either dont have a matching animation and some are very timing sensitive to you might draw the wrong conclusion if you miss the timing. The worst thing is that since ER as an open world game about "you play the way you want" it never checks that you learn these lessons. The game is actually really easy until you finish Ledynell, every obstacle until that can be powered through by exploring enough and leveling. The fact that you and Lupine find so much praise for explaining the combat shows how much FS messed up. A lot of frustrated players have played multiple of their games and thus show the ability to learn a bosses moveset with enough time, but they dont learn the intricacies exclusive to ER. This is similar to veterans playing BB or Sekiro before they have beaten Genichiro and Gascoine, the only difference being that with beating those bosses you have proven that you understand how the game is to be played. Beating Margit for most just means that they have a higher level and better gear.

Yep. If the posture mechanic was better communicated and I had ample room to experiment without having to run back each time trial and error failed, I probably would have enjoyed the combat more.

As a seasoned challenge runner, these games' bosses were NOT designed with that in mind. Just to scratch the surface, terrible arenas and attacks like Elden Stars (especially combined with the invisible walls and the fact that he can recast it at high range, preventing the manipulation dodge), Death Rite Bird explosion's effectively random line directions, or gideon's triple rings of light being a right hot mess ALL show a lack of care to strike that "hard but fair" people like to praise from software games for. Even Waterfowl Dance. While it's perfectly avoidable close range with the methods we've developed, it is EXTREMELY unlikely that the circling before rolling method is intentional. The run and jump dodge is also not properly accounted for as the margins are so small that the weapon you have equipped and going slightly uphill in the arena is enough to fail it. It's not to say these issues can't be dealt with, but the amount of stupid bs situations you have to avoid is far too large to reasonably say it was designed with such mastery in mind. Or, if it is, then they did a terrible job at quality control. Even an attack like Godskin Apostle's basic double swipe is a horrendous frame trap. Malenia had a similar problem with her double slash, but at least the light roll buff works as a crutch to compensate (though I don't think this is good from a design perspective, dodging bosses should really be built around medium roll). She still has plenty of stupidity though, such as being able to do an instant hit follow-up attack after her large disengaging spin. Anyhow. While I agree there's plenty of people that don't invest the time to learn the bosses properly and just call them bs instead of trying to learn them, there's also a lot of people that appear to think these bosses are perfectly designed to be played at a top level, without actually going through the efforts themselves, at which point they'd find the more subtle bullshit. It's close, but not quite there. There are too many rough edges. Please don't think that the difficult kills we do mean the bosses are completely fair, they're not.

Wouldn’t the whole „you have to play for heavy attacks and jump attacks“ thing ruin many play styles? I’m not saying that to argue against what you’ve said, rather I’m saying that would probably be another critique of elden rings boss design. Weapons that have weaker poise damage could be a LOT worse then.

Thank you for putting out this video. You convinced me to try and really learn the game, and now I'm working my way through RL1 maliketh and enjoying it thoroughly :)

I couldnt put into words what I thought about the game until this video and I now realize that posture breaking is by far the most fun build style I've used in elden ring

Stance is such an important mechanic if you're a melee player that I'm still surprised ER didn't bother to have a visible meter for it, especially when prior games like Sekiro and Nioh let you keep track of that and/or enemy stamina to let you know how close you are to an opening for big damage. My last playthrough focused on heavy attacks with a greataxe, and it certainly would have added to the fun if I could see how close a boss was to the next stagger and decide in the moment whether I might as well back off to heal, or yolo for that last crit I need to win.

In my first elden ring play though, I used hit trading strength weapons to succeed through most of the game. When I finally got to malenia I had all the drama and about her difficulty and bs beforehand and walked in prepared to hate. What I found was a boss that challenged my approach from the rest of the game. Her healing made hit trading worthless so I had to learn her openings and combos for myself. It only took me two sessions to come away with the win and I enjoyed her fight more than any other fight in the game

I’m not kidding when I say you made this game enjoyable again after the first playthrough. By explaining how openings in Elden ring bosses work, properly, I was able to actually understand and learn openings for these bosses. My opinion has shifted dramatically from very negative to very positive on er bosses. Genuinely thank you. I’m still frustrated that the game taught me none of this but I’m glad I have found what I’m actually meant to do

The one boss I truly struggled with until I understood how to fight was Maliketh because the way I used to fight is that every boss has a window of which they will be in a recovery from an attack chain or a big slam attack even if the recovery was only 2 sec that was enough but Maliketh had none it was at that point that I realized I have to attack him while he is performing his heavy attacks and be up close to him all the time ( I used to always keep distance until I see a recovery window to attack )

I’ve fought Mohg so many times that I can definitely say I’ve mechanically mastered dodge timings and what not.. it’s such a fun fucking fight!!!!!! edit: not to mention, fighting with that beautiful soundtrack in the back is so rhythmically satisfying

One thing you missed about radagon is how he can sometimes early cancel his teleport into another teleport (he sometimes actually spams thats shit) which will hit you due to the timing (either roll with correct timing get hit with the sudden reappear or anticipate the cancel and get hit with the normal). Its an example of how sometimes the AI bugs out and the fights get stupid.

i’m a complete souls newcomer, ive only played a very little bit of elden ring and bloodborne, and im nearing the end of my first playthrough of dark souls 1, so if i can ask, why is the “passive” playstyle of waiting to bait and punish a specific set of attacks considered unfun? maybe this playstyle is more encouraged in ds1, but ive been fighting many bosses like ornstein and smough and sif like this, and its a lot of fun to me. i like the feeling of starting the battle feeling out the boss’s toolkit, and then picking out certain openings to punish until i feel ive got a full-ish grasp on the boss. also, me personally, when i fought margit, i completely understood that i was meant to dodge certain attacks and circle around him in order to punish. i also really enjoyed his long combos and feints, it gave me the same rush as blocking a tricky mixup in a fighting game

5:43 no one gonna talk about how smooth that was?

And now after watching I feel an urge to go play again keeping these points in mind to see how it feels compared to how i felt before

Quick tip: Maliketh's beyblade attack happens almost every time if you roll away from the 2 handed uppercut move.

What is the equipment you used for your no-heal boss fights? I’d like to replicate it to try to beat the bosses that way myself. Thank you!

Interesting choice of music in the beginning. Great video. Just thought it was funny putting the undertake song for such a dark game

"The vast majority of vets hated elden ring bosses" Um, citation required

Honestly my biggest issue with ER bosses is the insane amount of delayed attacks, my favourite kinds of bosses are ones where intuition is actually useful for learning them, that's how I get into a flow state, ER bosses have so many attacks where playing intuitively will just get you hit, and you just have to bash your head against the wall to learn the timing, and to me that just leads to a ridiculous amount of boredom while I work it out, because I know I'm not getting anywhere until I do

such a great video. i appreciate the nuance in your analysis and i now have a much greater appreciation for the bosses. I’m still a fan of joe’s original video but i think i agree with this one at the end of the day

Some really great match cuts in this video! Hell, Joe would be proud 😂

I love the Elden Ring bosses. And I'm a normie non-summons player. Sort of think the people who were satisfied by and large stayed mostly silent. A posture meter would've made sense though.

I’m not a challenge runner of anything like that, in fact Elden Ring was my first souls game, and it led to me getting to experience the other masterpieces that precursed it. But after my first playthrough where I only used magic, I switched to what you describe as “normal mode” and I feel like I understood how the bosses worked. I think it’s namely because I didn’t go in treating the bosses like DS3 ones because of the somewhat similar combat speed, but the only time I truly felt like it was unfair was the Gank bosses and Elden Stars. I’m not sure if I’m the minority when it comes to this experience, but it’s why I loved Elden Ring so much, especially since playing normal mode on this game felt so much harder than it’s predecessors.

I feel like making the game relying so much on posture breaks would hurt a lot of builds that dont rely on them, I run a bleed build with 2 curved swords wich rely on your ability to be aggressive and land allot of hits quickly to keep up the bleed proc, but if they did the change your proposing that build idea would be underpowered, and I personally didn't have a problem with the boss designs other than bosses like elden beast and the fire giant, malenia is understandable and I'm not defending her boss design but one of my most memorable experiences was my first time dodging her waterfowl dance perfectly, and thats part of what makes her unique. I'd prefer if they showed the posture bar and gave us some more bosses close to margit in the beginning, but changing the game to be so posture based also feels like it'd steal some aspects of sekiros identity, instead of making elden ring feel unique to other games of the souls genre, but then again this might just be the rambling of a "filthy bleed build" who doesnt have posture breaks on his mind when fighting a boss

One of the things that I've thought about in regards to Elden Ring bosses is that perhaps we are so conditioned to fight bosses a particular way that we are blind to the possibilities. It is so obvious that a game that finally added proper jumping and implemented the posture system would require a change of approach on our part, yet we kept doing the same old song and dance even when it didn't work. We couldn't even recognize some openings for what they were. On my first playthrough, I've felt the "no openings" feeling many times. Later down the line I realized just how blind I was to the possibilities. Elden Ring is much more about the dance than the previous titles were, where you could easily just get by with the standard Dark Souls just roll through it and wait for an opening tactic.

I think core problem with how every video I’ve seen of ER’s bosses on whether they are both good and bad miss something important to about why ER’s bosses the why they are. Everything ER bosses do are done by bosses in Bloodborne and DS3, this isn’t actually new. Combo attacks that has open in between them, combo extensions based on position, Strafeble attacks, multiple hitting moves that can avoid by running away, heck DS3 has a posture system similar to ER, where bosses will get knocked down or get heavily staggered with aggressively play. Seriously go check them in those games. The difference between DS3/BB bosses and ER is that it was too easy to just rely on dodge roll. ER took those elements and amp them up. In the comment section someone described ER bosses as amped up versions of Champion Gundyr and Pontiff but that’s actually true because they follow a similar design philosophy w/ ER bosses. What I’m trying to say is that, ER bosses are the way they because From assumed vets understood this from the previous games and amplified those elements but obviously that the community never actually realized that and only learned dodging part and nothing else. Now here we are. ER bosses are natural evolutions to bosses of DS3 and Bloodborne they aren’t actually that different.

200 hours in the game and I finally get the bosses and having fun. Thanks man, didn't expect this video to help me this much

Hey Mr. King, or Feeble, this was a great break-down of the boss mechanics that I felt like explained a lot of the issues I had when playing Elden Ring since launch. The only thing I have to talk about is whether stance-breaks are actually intended to be a core part of the gameplay. The only reason for this is because the Ash-of-War you use in this video is Square-off which has, after the Flame of the Redmanes nerf, THE highest stance damage of 40 for an Ash-of-war which no other Ash-of-War does. Now after watching your video, I used a straight sword with the Square-Off Ash-of-War and played how you recommended in the video and it made the game a lot more fun, however I ended up just using the skill most of the time rather than jumping heavy's or charged heavies because I knew that those would bring me the highest chances of breaking posture for bosses. While I think the playstyle that you brought up in the video is great and made the game a lot more fun and aggressive, I don't think playing for posture-breaks is intended by the developers since other than Square-Off and maybe Unsheathe(katana skill) no other Ash-of-War allows you to break posture that fast with a light weapon like a straight sword. I am just bringing this up to you to maybe see if you can still play for posture breaks with other weapons that do not have this unique skill but rather by just using charged or jumping heavies. I've watched all of your level 1 runs and you are a lot better at the game than I am, so if this playstyle of focusing on posture-breaks is viable for other weapons without these stance-heavy Ashes-of-War then you will be the one that would find that out. I love the way you figure out mechanics of Souls games and would love to hear your thoughts on the matter.

This is a very good video, and the idea of teaching the player is something I noticed when fighting Placidusax. During the Placidusax fight I thought "This reminds me of Artorias," who is my favourite boss in the Souls games, even though they're not much alike. The reason is that both bosses are incredible at teaching you how to fight them without being easy. Every move feels intuitive and I got into the flow state in a way that doesn't happen with most other bosses.

That comment about how the bosses punish you for trying to learn their movesets with high damage is really good, i ended up playing elden ring ~8 ish times before i realy clicked with some of the endgame movesets and i'm having a realization moment. Sick vid

might be because i'm used to kingdom hearts, but extremely aggressive bosses that have little to no room for error and demand mastery are what i expect when i fight optional superbosses edit: oh my god elden ring is a spectacle fighter disguised as a dark souls game

The final straw for me was finding out parry on most bosses didn't award a critical hit but only just a 1/3 counter. You mean to tell me that if I decide to take the time to actually learn the boss and the timings, and put myself at risk to the consequences inherit to the parry mechanic, all I get is a pat on the back with no rewards, while the dude going double bandit sword with seppuku and mimic tear is immediatly rewarded?! Also, can we talk about how little damage most weapons do to a boss when getting a critical hit? So even if you decide to parry 3 times in a row to get yourself a critical, it won't really even reward you that much. WHAT A JOKE.

This video helped me learn to play Elden ring in a more fun way for me thank you feeble king

When the game first came out, I had to respec to a bleed build to beat malenia. After that first playthrough, I didn't touch the game for an entire year. Now that I've gotten into playing again (forcing myself to not use spirit summons and sticking to my "normal" build) I find that I am having much more fun. Whenever I got hit in old souls games, I would disengage and get a heal in just to top off and give myself more leeway. In elden ring, I notice that when I get hit, I'll go right back into the fight because I'm super close to a posture break. One boss that I think does a really good job at teaching the player they have to make openings instead of being given them is the shield crucible knight in the evergoal. You don't have enough room to get away and heal when you get hit, so you are forced to create an opportunity to heal. Hitting his shield will always cause him to do the exaggerated shield bash which is fast enough to get a heal/charged r2 off. Before I ramble too much, I just want to state my point: I don't think Elden Ring was bad at teaching the player; I think that the players deep down really just looked at Elden Ring like it as Dark Souls 4 when it isn't. You get rewarded for hyper aggressive play like in Bloodborne but in a different way. You are rewarded for relentless, precise gameplay like in Sekiro. And you can use all of your experience in the souls games to fight in the traditional manner when it calls for it. Elden Ring really is the culmination of all the soulsbornekiro games, not just big dark souls. Remember "Hesitation is defeat."

I've noticed that no one has complained about the crippling effect against bosses in Bloodborne. Another hidden mechanic that we learn as we play.... Idk but maybe all of this info is hidden to the player so they can discover it instead of it being a mandatory way of defeating bosses...either way I absolutely love this game

This video is a masterpiece. Well done :)

When talking about the "boss gauntlet" all i could think about was that would be a perfect second use for the mimic tear. Just have an arena like the actual boss and you can select something for it to mimic and practice against it

i just wanna say i found this game near impossible when going through it, but i never disliked it during playing it. i bought elden ring knowing i was going into an extremely hard game so every single time i progressed past a boss filled me with an unrivalled sense of accomplishment. and im not what you consider a souls vet, i had roughly 200 hours or so in DS3 only.

After beating the whole game with an ultra greatsword (guts build). It honestly gave me more light into the game. I think not giving up is the best thing you can do for yourself. This has been the game I've been waiting for...appreciate the in depth videos like this.

I enjoyed the vid Feeble King, very informative and actually constructive in terms of Elden Ring defence, it changed the way I played the game but has not changed my opinion of Elden Ring. I agreed with all your boss rankings expect for Malenia's first phase. I never beat Malenia in my first playthrough but after watching this I booted a NG+1 character and beat her in 10 trys (3 for learning first phase, 3 for learning second, 1 death in phase 1 from waterfowl and 2 in phase two from waterfowl.) The winning run was a near flawless first phase with only two hits, one from a misread on her attack and another from me not paying attention. I chessed the second phase with two Comet Azur while Malenia was recovering from her flower explosion, a bit more RNG blessed run but hey ho, if she can use BS ability spam then so can I. This video did more to help me understand Elden Ring then over 100 hours of gameplay... Which is my opinion has not changed, this inability to tell the player how to properly play the game is a massive issue and had me convinced Fromsoft was far too ambitious and would have benefited in pursuing a smaller, more focused game.

The reason the Elden Beast is the final boss is because Elden Ring's story has a big cosmic element. Marika/Radagon might be a god but they are still just vassals for the greater will. Marika doesn't even want to be a god anymore (hence the hewg plan) but the greater will says that "even in shackles she remains a god and it's vision's vassal". They could have fleshed out the beast's mechanics more but thematically the Elden Beast (which represents the greater will's influence on the lands between) had to still be a boss after Radagon the same way the moon presence still had to be the final boss after gehrman even though gehrman is much more climatic mechanically

All I can say is fucking finally you found how to enjoy the bosses in Elden Ring. I enjoyed them pretty much from my first playthrough and have enjoyed them more and more with each successive playthrough as I discover more and more ways to fight each boss. The biggest problem with ur video though is you approach it as though stance breaking is the only fun way to beat each boss but I disagree, if you apply the same mentality just with quick attacks, you have even more openings at the cost of never getting a stance break release of tension.

Fire Giant isn't that bad. Do it again on the ground. Constantly hit his right leg. It will break at some point and then you'll have a damagr multipler. Then fof phase 2, the riskier but higher dps and fun way is to target the hands and the eye when he falls.

What weopon is he using cuz i want to fight the bosses with his setup and withouthealing too.

This video is actually better than both Joseph's and Lupine's tbh. You got the most of your points rights. However I'm still confused how you and all other people resorted to roll+R1's in the first place. I thought it was very obvious to use charged/jump/guard R2's since literally every enemy in the game has posture mechanic unlike any other souls game. Idk, I experienced the game this way from the very beginning, the moment I guard-countered soldier of godrick and killed him in two hits. It was very clear to me that game encourages this behavior. Also the tutorial gave enough messages for a souls game. These games have always been cryptic and having a screen to tell you this was more than enough I believe. I believe the culprit here is again the players for sharing a very bad strategy from the very first day(I was there on Twitter/Reddit w/e) that souls games and consequently Elden Ring are about rolling at the right time and hitting the enemy with a light attack. This dogmatic behavior later caused most of the players to wrongly accuse the game of having a bad design unfortunately. But thanks again for this incredible video. I very much enjoyed it and really appreciate your change of attitude regarding the ideas on your first video and not being stuck on them. Congratulations! 🎉

Excited to dive deep into this. Always enjoy your critiques as you seem to understand the difference between personal enjoyment, and good/bad. You can enjoy something bad, and you can personally dislike something that is "good". Although I don't always agree with what you have to say, I've never felt like you force your opinion as the holy grail as so many other discussions tend to go. I hope you continue putting out high quality videos and keep the discussion going. Its hard to discuss souls games in general because every complaint is met with a "get good", but providing at least a place to have some discussion on the dreaded taboo is well welcomed.

This the most UNBIASED Souls channel in the world. Love your videos bro.

Agree 100%. I played through the game 3 times & it wasn’t until shadow of the erdtree that I started to understand the boss stance is so crucial; and went “wait a minute, I’m just playing Sekiro; the game just never told me”

One question tho, how is one supposed to posture break with anything but a heavy weapon? I feel like what you described in your video is just one way to play with maybe 2 or 3 weapon types. Of which there are a lot more. Correct me if I'm wrong.

Amazing video! I initially hated the bosses in this game, I thought they were so unfair and impossible to get good at. My feelings on the bosses changed drastically since I realized I shouldn't play Elden Ring like I would play a Dark Souls game. I just had to go for posture breaks, and take the time to find more positioning based openings. Since then with every run I do, I just enjoy them more and more.

Has your opinion on crucible knight changed? I personally prefer the one with the spear rather than the one with the shield.

This video is absolutely fantastic

As someone who kinda struggles memorizing things in general, discovering new moves on a boss you thought you understood is kinda crushing. Especially when its something like waterfowl that makes the fight feel like RNG.

This was my first soulsborn game and I'm frankly hooked forever. I love rpgs with an unspoken protagonist. This has been everything I've wanted in that category. It's put skyrim and fallout to shame in regard to role playing. The combat and the difficulty has been unlike anything else I've ever played. It's like zelda but with much more diversity and challenge. I'll never be able to go back to skyrim or fallout which were two of my favorite games prior to elden ring. I've found the combat to be deeply satisfying. My first playthrough of elden ring was such a struggle for me but also so very satisfying. My second and third runs were effortless breezes after getting through the initial learning curve of my first playthrough. This game honestly changed gaming entirely for me. I've played other games since elden ring, lots honestly, but I always find myself coming back. Going into a fresh game or starting a new game plus. I'm a FromSoft fan now. I'm excited to try armored core when it comes out. I plan to play bloodborn and all the dark souls but as I've kept playing elden ring I haven't gotten around to it yet. I can understand some criticism of elden ring and that it's not for everyone. As an avid gamer in my 30s who's played tons of games for tons of time, elden ring is my new favorite game and definitely on my list already for one of the best games I've ever played. I can't sing this games praises enough.

Amazing video. I went in to the game after seeing a VaatiVidya interview where he was allowed to play the game early, and he pushed the fact that doing light attacks on Margit wasn't getting anywhere, but when he threw in strong, charged, and jump attacks and was able to break his posture, the fight made sense. This is the mindset I approached the game with, and for bosses that worked well under this system (Mohg and Radagon being the most memorable examples) I thought were great. I will say, this game absolutely needs a boss rush; the game is so large that people are discouraged from going through it all again to fight bosses they never understood enough to like. Also long comment incoming: I did not understand Maliketh. I had a mid level on a faith build (yikes) who was only allowed to kill the minimum number of bosses using speedrun glitches to skip all but Maliketh, Radagon, and Elden Beast, and Maliketh was an insurmountable roadblock. Then I saw a challenge runner who understood the boss fight him, and my eyes opened. Later I fought Maliketh straight up, learned his moveset, forsook mimic tear, and it was genuinely a great experience. I similarly had a character who went to fight Mohg right after seeing Varre in Liurnia, and I did poor damage and died in 1-3 hits. But I pushed through, I learned all of Mohg's combos, found circle strafe openings, end of combo openings, mid combo openings, working in charged attacks to get those posture breaks, and then phase 2 iterated on all of what I had learned in the best way. I feel constantly engaged whenever I fight him, just like any Sekiro boss, making Mohg my favorite boss in any game that isn't Sekiro. And holy shit you see it too, you share my understanding of the sheer brilliance of Mohg. Thank you. Maybe Mohg beats every boss in Sekiro except for Inner Father??? I'm going to need to fight Isshin some more to see if I need to give Mohg even more praise. For phase 1, I poise broke him under the blood shower attack more often than he shouted in latin there because I get a couple extra poise damage evaporation prevention glintstone pebbles in, so I share your annoyance there. Also the biggest flaw of the fight is that he has a mechanic where his damage is increased for a while after a bleed proc goes off on you or him, but there is no sound cue and the visual effect is so tiny that you'll only see it if you found the "Lord of Blood's Exultation" talisman from the Leyndell sewer catacombs, have used it yourself, and actively looked at him to see if he had that buff. The mushroom dudes who buff when poison happens do this far better with a distinctive sound cue and a visual effect that covers a third of their body. As per the first part of "How to Fix Elden Ring Boss Design", Sekiro has bosses which are literally this. Ashina Elite just before Genichiro is literally the kind of boss you're describing, he forces you to learn how to time deflections, _they know how to design games like this_. Margit should've been a better tutorial like you said. I enjoyed Radahn quite a lot more than you, fighting him on my RL1 run, mainly because I rolled through most of the big combos and only did the "run under him" strat for exactly one combo where it didn't feel quite as trial and error-y. He definitely needs the camera zoomed out more, and he can spawn ground lightning AoE right on top of you if you're too close to him and kill you, and yeah the arrow phase is annoying. I guess you should will yourself to learn the dodge timings for combos instead of just standing under him for all of them and reevaluate your enjoyment of him. Also, one of the best things this game did was to tone down the Godskin Apostle's heal reading attack. This one change singlehandedly takes the fight from A tier to S tier; they made it come out later and not be able to interrupt his general AI as easily. This has respectively two benefits: the first means you can heal, then have time to dodge the fireball and get a hit in on him, and the second means he stops feeling like a robot who will automatically fireball you each and every time you hit the heal button. Patches have also given the player's melee arsenal a lot of buffs. Poise damage is a lot better when two handing a weapon, pretty much every moveset is better in some way, etc. Playing on current patch is just a way better experience than playing on the old patches.

Great video!

Also, limgrave and weeping peninsula teach you the fundamentals of combat and margit teaches you the fundamentals of boss fights. I struggled with margit for a long time but the bosses after him were easier due to the lessons he taught me about posture delayed attacks and directional dodging depending on the attack.

I think one of the reasons why i enjoyed elden ring so much in my first playthrough and still do to this day is because the game i played prior to it was sekiro. While i was playing elden ring, my mind still wanted to play like sekiro, so I really tried to play the game in a way that would get me those satisfying posture breaks, leading me to play the game in the most fun way possible

I have not finished the video, but I just heard one of your proposed solutions (21:24) and it made me stop what I was doing because my brain started screaming at me (though I have listened a bit further). From my experience with Wo Long Dynasty, both playing and seeing what other people playing it think, making weapons do little damage but make up for it when you get staggers into crits has the opposite effect and mostly makes people play even more defensively and cautiously, even though the game is VERY heavy handed with how it teaches how it works and how it wants you to play it, far moreso than any Soulslike (except Sekiro if you count it as one). I'll either edit this comment or write a reply later on once I've watched the whole thing and actually get into it all, but I wanted to write this now before I forgot.

Amazing video as allways Feeble King o7

I know you did this a little bit but do you think you can make guides on learning the move sets for some of the games’ toughest bosses?

This was my first dark souls game and I immediately went for an intelligence build, just because I thought it looked cool. While I agree that this build definitely makes the game easier I definitely wouldn't I enjoyed half the bosses and much. I did notice a big problem at the end because I defeated mohg before Morgot and what happened because of that was that I was over leveled for both Morgot and the lich dragon which really sucks because it took away from the epicness of the fight. I wish that there was some kind of balancing system that would have made the earlier bosses feel as hard as they looked.

I played 2 runs One int/dex moonveil with summons Second is blasphemous blade build no summons that I enjoyed more actually I think ppl forgot that in ER is that YOU are a lot stronger than usual So technically the "Easy" hit trade weapons are actually the new expected normal That open world was not designed to be left empty with some broadswords and like two daggers Over the top looking or acting weapons are awesome for me!

Really good thoughts, gonna have to sit with this one for a while. I've been trying to enjoy these end game bosses since the game was released, because I can see their craftsmanship, but I couldn't figure out how to have fun with them. Maybe this is the way.

I feel like your video has a couple of contradiction: 1) very early you introduce the point that one issue is that players can not change bosses movesets. You call Lupine condescending for suggesting to use other game mechanics to circumvent or ignore certain boss mechanics but point out that Joseph did not want to do that and instead learn the boss. But in the literal next sentence you say a possible solution would be to controll boss movesets to make them easier... which for me is just the same thing removing parts of bosses behaviors. 2) you say one of the issues is that nothing is stopping the player to play by only exploiting selected attacks and waiting for openings and from that follows that you think the learning would be improved if something was there to prevent that. I find this contradictionary because it invalidates a playstyle that many players enjoy ... just because you and joseph identified this as a boring and unfun way to play does not mean that there are no players out there who like that methodic approach . The fact of the matter is that Elden Ring does allow for a variety of gameplay styles some you might consider fun and others you might consider not ... please stop asking the devs to nerf every playstyle you dont personally enjoy. The developers did not have one "correct" way to fight the enemies in mind which is also why they dont strongly push you into one direction. Fighting the bosses by using the stagger mechanic is only the "optimal" way to play for pure melee builds and if you dont like playing passive. Otherwise its just one of many ways to play. 3) I find your ascertion that 90 % of souls vets hated the combat after Joseph video without merrit. The number is pulled absolutley out of thin air and there is no reason to assume the vocal minority represents any signifcant part of the audience. In fact I would hazzard the guess that many more souls vets enjoyed the game and its bosses than did not. Joseph has a large audience and most people in that audience obviously agree with him regardless of if he is correct or not. I personally think he has some good videos that do thourough analysis and present valid issues.... I also think he has other videos where he doesnt know what he is talkning about 90% of the time and his clear bias is influencing his analysis. I think Joseph Anderson is a critic whos position you strongly need to interogate yourself while listening to him since he quite often claims factuality where it doesnt apply. You should do this for any critic but over watching his videos I have noticed many occasions where he bases stuff on wrong assumptions (I do not want to hazzard a guess if this is due to incompetence or malice on his part) 4) Magrit as a teaching tool: Your assertion that the only thing Margit teaches is how to circle to his back ist really reductory. Here is a couple of things margit teaches a new player a) Bosses can have quick and delayed attacks so you have to learn timings b) bosses have positional triggers for attacks and combo extenders depending on your position c) Bosses have multiple phase with changes in attack patterns d) some attack can be avoided by jumping (Godrick the boss just after reinforces that) d) (your point) some attacks can be avoided by positioning, e) bosses can be posture broken and fights can be made easier by that e) most humanoid bosses can be parried f)bosses will give you few openings by themselves g)bosses are hard if you struggle go level up .... some of these lessons require you to actually try out things though. 5) Your fire giant analysis is from the perspective of someone who thinks Midir is a shit fight with to much HP while sepnding the entire fight hitting his back legs.

I think I said this back when Joseph's video came out, but even at the time, I recognized that most people's gripe with Elden Ring boss design was due to them playing it like DS3, when there are plenty of attacks that don't require timing rolls if you just position correctly, or sprint to avoid them. After having done a few separate playthroughs and breaking my Dark Souls habits, the only moves in the game that I haven't found a consistent response to are some of Morgott's sword attacks, and the first hit of Waterfowl. Otherwise, people just weren't ready to incorporate positioning and defensive tools besides rolling into their general play. This got mixed in with some actually bad bosses like Godskin Duo or Fire Giant, and made people complain about Maliketh, Mohg, Malenia, etc. without even learning them. Now that I understand how they expect me to play the game, it makes a lot of older bosses feel a bit shallow.

This was pretty much my first fromsoftware game, and I used mimic tear and the blasphemous blade throughout most of the game. I've beaten all the soulslike fromsoft games now, and I've beaten most of them multiple times. I need to redo elden ring and see how good the bosses are because I just cheesed my way through it the 1st time. Edit: I've beaten every boss but malenia with the godskin noble outfit and godskin greatsword. The bosses were hard but doable and pretty fun. Malenia seems pretty bs with waterfowl and is pretty brutal so far. I beat Malenia, she's a bit too rng for me tho. Sometimes she's great when she dosent spam her ults. Sometimes she does 3 waterfowls in a row when she's three shot. Overall she's alright but could be better. Edit: Beat her again with the guts sword on my second try at like lvl 120. She's honestly a really good boss when you know how to beat her and she dosent spam her ults. Edit: I've beaten her so many times with a bunch of weapons like the claymore, radahns greatswords, +20 knight greatsword, godslayer greatsword and greatswords, sacred relic sword, winged sythe, godricks axe, ghiza wheel, bloodhound fang, dungeaters sword, hand of melania, dry uchi and nagi, and mohgs spear. It dosent even matter if she spams her ults anymore this boss isn't that hard if you practice her a bit. Definitely my favorite boss in the game, the Stockholm syndrome has taken ahold of me and I am now a malenia stan.

A well-made and thoughtful video that provides a ton of really good information that unfortunately misses so many of the points From was trying to make with this game.

also i disagree with another thing. the game does teach you it's mechanics quite well like godrick teaching you to jump shockwaves , agheel teaching you about positioning mattering tree sentinel about how to stay agressive and make use of stance breaks also phase 2 crucible knights being the perfect teaching tool to explain how combo branches work it's just all so amazingly explained. also there is something that elden ring teaches you every step of the way. TRY ALL OPTIONS instead of sticking what you know explore what you don't know. me doing this for my first elden ring playthrough and my first playthrough of a fromsoft game is what allowed me to enjoy the game while not using summons melee only and no shields. even though this was my first playthrough. the fact that i approached it like a teacher trying to show me how to solve a problem and not like most people who use the title of ,,souls veteran'' who think that they are godgamers that can't do wrong and if they die they don't need to learn but the game needs to be dumbed down is what saved me and my mindset.

I'm glad I found this. I've been looking for someone who likes elden ring bosses to explain why they like them in a way that doesn't come across as elitist or ignorant and hadn't found that until now. I was hoping that changing my way of viewing them could get me to like them, since, like Joe, I adore many aspects of this game but my dislike of most of the bosses really sours a game that could otherwise be a favorite of mine. Unfortunately, I left the video thinking this will likely not be the case even though, ironically, the intended playstyle actually fits the way I like to play the game surprisingly well. In previous titles I really enjoyed finding openings in the middle of combos or cheeky little places you could stand to cause the bosses attack to miss, however I liked them as ways to optimize a fight that functions as a solid challenge without them, rather than a borderline necessity to overcome a near impossible challenge without them (which is the take away I got from this defense). An example of an elden ring boss I did phenomenally in this regard was the Tree Sentinel (at least when fighting him immediately after leaving the tutorial area), which remains one of my favorite elden ring fights as well as probably my favorite tutorial boss in any fromsoft game. However, as your video brings up, the difficulty of finding those openings amidst so many long combos that could often even be extended to punish you for trying to attack in an opening if you weren't in the right position made me abandon trying since I assumed the game just wasn't built around that. Moreover, your tier list made me realize that even if I come to see the bosses as you do I still probably won't like them because things you see as a minor issue are to me an absolute dealbreaker and vice versa. Margit for example, even if I come to like the flow of the fight will never reach above maximum c tier for me because I almost categorically despises enemies in fromsoft games that can cancel what should have been the end lag of their combo by either tacking on additional attacks or jumping away in response to your actions, since it almost always feels unfair to me, like they are adding difficulty by letting the boss cheat, and then I just don't enjoy the challenge anymore. Therefore even if his design, lore, and arena were absolutely top notch (which outside of maybe the lore they certainly are not) then my irritation with the fight would still keep me from truly enjoying it. On the other side of things, I'd probably put fire giant in the low b/high c tier because I found the bullshit in his fight mildly irritating at worst (though I guess im also more used to camera fuckery and the like) which detracts less from my enjoyment of how cool the bosses design is than a feeling that the boss is cheating. Mohg is probably the only fight in the game where my opinion might actually change significantly since that was a fight I almost loved but was always just too annoyed with how few openings it felt like he had as well as how irritating the persistent groundfire was for me (though that aspect won't change). Oh, and I am going back and editing this because I forgot to even mention my dislike for attacks with long windups where it feels like the attack is being unnaturally delayed just for the purpose of fucking with your dodge timing. And yeah, it IS being delayed just to fuck with your dodge timing, but it really takes me out of the fight when the animation and timing feels so unnatural, and elden ring was rife with those for me. Same with a lot of the heal punishes that start coming before the flask animation even visibly begins. Even in cases where it's not that punishing (like margitt) it still strips away the sensation that I'm in a duel with the character I'm fighting and reminds me that I'm really against a computer, one that is not above cheating. At the end of the day, even though it helped me better understand what elden ring's bosses were going for, it didn't alleviate my fears that the direction of boss design fromsoft is taking might just not be for me. Maybe I'm just being pessimistic, since I adored all of sekiro's bosses (minus the ape gank, but the headless ape without its girlfriend is S tier so I found it at least somewhat tolerable), but if this is how from is going to be designing bosses in the future I just don't think the game's will ever quite be the same again for me, even if they do a better job of tutorializing them. It'd be a shame, DS1 is my favorite game of all time and bloodborne and sekiro are both not far behind it, but doesn't seem like there's much I can do about it. At the very least, though, if they want to make inbuilt challenge modes (like what fighting bosses without summons is, say what you will but I still think the default experience the game was designed around assumed a summon would be used) I'd at least like it to be implemented in a way that gives some middle ground to the bosses, so they don't feel like either total bullshit or a non-interactive pushover.

The thing is that challenge runners dont get in my opinion is that any person can become as good at the game as they are but not everybody wants to spend theyr pretious time off work or studyies dying over and over and basicly treating the game like work or research, where i study 30 or so attack pattern combinations and figure out unintuitive broken ways to exploit ai or animation hitboxes. That is not what the majority would consider a fun and quality time spending, not everyone even has that kind of time. To me its clear that bosses where designed around the idea of the player using spirit ashes that is why they are overtuned and relentless it makes it a challenge even with a summon unless you have an op build. In previous games especially ds1 and 2 bosses would have way less attacks and always give you consistent timings for punish, it was fun to learn exactly because you could easily keep in mind those 5 attacks. With elden ring this type of approach just started to seem like an absolutely gruesome ordeal, obviously not imposible that much is clear when you see a guy beat malenia sl1 with no rolls but i can imagine the hours and hours he spent in that arena hearing her say who she is.

Thank you for making this video. Now that I understand the importance of posture breaking, charge attacks, jump attacks and guard counters I enjoy the game so much more.