The Lost Soul Arts of Demon's Souls 

And jumping a ledge one time in the whole game.

Lazy Veteran have you heard of dark souls 3

Lazy Veteran I was replying to YOU, in regards to your comment on poise. Jesus Christ

@Lazy Veteran why are you so angry? It's not healthy to be so aggressive. Do you need someone to talk to?

now we got jumping anywhere

Floppy so true

Floppy Indeed. The fanbase ends up being the game's worst enemy, ironically enough.

Man I just want a Sonic game that understands what made the series good: 3D gameplay and lots of edgy characters. Is that too much to ask?

Tell me about it, man. No warping from the beginning and the interconnected world is what made Dark Souls 1 so special, but you wouldn't believe the number of people that prefer fast travel from the very beginning just because it's more convenient. Narrow-sided is right, yeah. They don't see how immersion and the sense of adventure gets so much better with no warping allowed until the Lordvessel.

I wounder if they will ever do blue sentinels right

Now every nearly every archer character in this Elden Ring has arrows that literally curve in a way you can see

you can stop the arrows by talking to the guy who shoots them, but of course he didn't mention it since it wouldn't fit to his narrative

@@ehrtdaz7186 It's easy to see how that's a contrived solution, though, much like the curving arrows are a contrived means to make that section challenging.

@@siphillis what?

@@ehrtdaz7186 You have to run through that area before you can talk to him. But even if you didn't have to, it wouldn't invalidate the point, which is that something that should work (feinting to throw off aim) doesn't actually work. IIRC though, even as far back as Dark Souls 1 there were physics-bending arrows, most notably the famous Anor Londo archers.

From Software clearly found their gold goose formula and are sticking too it, but that's not something you can really blame them for I suppose. When you haphazardly rehash ideas with new coats of paint and they only get more popular with each release there is very little reason to stop. As someone who loves open world games, one of my favorites being Morrowind, it irks me a bit when I read discussion about Elden Ring and people raving about how the open world design is "revolutionary" and "game changing" when it fails basic world building concepts present in a 20 year old game. Like you point about Dark Souls 1's lack of fast travel, Morrowind's fast travel is very limited. You can only fast travel through predetermined routes via terrestrial creatures called Silt Striders, Mages Guild teleportation, or boating services. The player had to learn how to navigate the island of Vvardenfell which added greatly to the immersion of the game. Caveats existed in the way of Intervention scrolls, but you had no real control to which shrine they sent you to. This and a plethora of other reasons including: fleshed out history, fleshed out racial culture in and outside Vvardenfell, numerous villages and cities with their own secrets to discover, and crazy lore is why Morrowind is still fondly discussed 20 years later. On the flip side, Elden Ring is another romp as the Chosen Undead through another Lordan to kill the big bad guy because someone else told you to do it while having no ability to interact with anything or anyone other than killing because it's a Dark Souls game. While some parts of the Lands Between are visually striking and very pretty, it still does not offer much outside of combat and is essentially one big arena rather than a 'world'. As someone whose been playing video games for a long time, on some level it irks me a little to see videos with millions of views calling From Software's rehashed ideas "revolutionary" and how they "changed everything". It genuinely feels as if games that came out before 2009 simply do not exist anymore. To make a point, 15 years ago today Ninja Gaiden 2 came out on the Xbox 360, easily one of the most difficult and brutal Stylish Action games ever released. However, an ARPG with incredibly sluggish, shallow, and barebones combat became the poster-child for difficulty in video games. That is the power of marketing combined with the reality of millions of new video game players coming into the 7th console generation. To Matt's point, why would I not just play something like Ninja Gaiden, Bayonetta, Devil May Cry, or Monster Hunter if From Software is going to continue to make bootleg action games? I don't think Melania was the hardest boss fight of 2022. She's difficult, yeah, but Rodin from Bayonetta 3 I found to be far more difficult. A large part due to Bayonetta 3 being a pure action game. There are no builds, there is no coop, and the fight itself has its own restrictions to increase the difficulty further like no healing items. The pace of the fight is also significantly faster and Rodin can and will kill you from full health in the blink of an eye if you aren't on top of your game. To me the Souls games have run their course, I don't think From Software is able to provide games like Demon's or Dark Souls 1 anymore whether it's due to running out of ideas or a shift in their philosophy. In my eyes, you'd never get something like Sif from modern From Software. If modern From Software made Dark Souls 1 Sif would mutate into some kind of horrific meat creature, grab all the swords on Artorias' grave, and start spinning at you like a helicopter to start phase two of the boss fight asking Artorias to forgive him. Even NPC questlines have become predictable to a point. It makes it difficult to form connections with characters when you know they're going to die anyway, what's the point? Solaire stuck with people due to Dark Souls still being unpredictable at the time, seeing a character you formed a bond with fall so far from what he once was had an impact. It's impossible to recreate Solaire today because you expect him to die, because NPCs largely always die because it's a Dark Souls game.

@@viewtiful1015 I completely agree, particularly in regards to the action gameplay. What I always loved about the first two Souls games was how they made you inexperienced and clumsy in the face of overwhelming odds. You had to observant and cautious, not hyper-skilled or completely familiar with the enemies' movesets. It's like Matt said, it places you in the position of a novice adventurer, and lets you experience the atmosphere from your character's eyes. No games have ever made me feel more like a Knight Errant looking for glory, a Novice Mage in search of knowledge, or a Devout Priest trying to make the world a better place than Dark Souls 1 and Demon's Souls, including much more in depth or story heavy RPG's. The very beginning of Elden Ring, skulking through the woods trying to ambush or sneak past enemies I was too weak to fight came close to replicating this, but I quickly encountered that feeling of 'big arenas' that you described. In the first two games (and Bloodborne, to a lesser extent) I felt as though the normal world was just outside the bounds of the game. Bolitaria was sensibly arrayed and encased by demon fog, the objective was to stop this spreading to the rest of the world. Of course villages and mills and ordinary life existed beyond, it was a logical conclusion. Lordran was less sensibly arrayed, but travelling on foot gave it a sense of scale, and the constant references to outside lands like Carim and Astora painted a picture of a huge fantasy realm, all of which was affected by the linking of the fire. Instead of the feeling like a decayed and dangerous pocket of a world which was receiving crusades and expeditions from far away lands, The Lands Between felt like a big Fortnite island entirely populated by zombies. Where was the normalcy, the background of my character? What could I hope for at the end of this adventure? It's hard to feel invested in a world populated by people who are 99% mad, and where the only sane ones have nebulous origins and are almost exclusively encountered in an external pocket dimension. It's a shame, From Software's games keep getting more impressive in scale, and more bland in flavour. I hate to criticise Elden Ring because it really does feel like an immense project, but I can't see much interesting in said project. The only thing I can help but think about From Software is "Oh well, they made two really great games.", and while it's a shame that it seems like we won't get that again, more than anything else I'm just glad that they were made in the first place.

@@viewtiful1015As much as I really enjoyed Elden Ring and all of their other Souls games, I agree that the formula has definitely reached it's limit. Miyazaki has talked about having other directors make their own games, so hopefully they'll start branching out to make some unique experiences like Demons Souls was back then. In my opinion, they were sort of going in that direction with Deracine and Sekiro and Miyazaki is directing another game that apparently doesn't fit with the usual Action RPG stuff that they do. Also considering they pivoted to Armored Core after the sheer success of Elden Ring, and it's being directed by Yamamura (lead combat designer for Sekiro), I'm pretty excited for whatever Fromsoft does in the future.

Lack of consequences in Elden Ring is one of the most jarring things. At one point you can join the Recusants, a group that is implacably opposed to the Erdtree and Roundtable Hold and whose mission is to assassinate tarnished. You would expect that this would cause a rift where the Roundtable hold would kick you out but in reality it doesn't matter at all and no one in the Roundtable Hold even acknowledges that you've done this. Another big choice is the Frenzied Flame, where accepting it will cause Melina to abandon you. Since Melina is necessary to burn the Erdtree this should force you to find an alternate path to getting past the Erdtree's thorns. Instead it's just the exact same path with you instead of Melina doing the burning. I'm not expecting CRPG levels of depth here but it would be nice if any of your choices made any difference at all.

This is exactly what happened to Assassin's Creed. AC1 was bold, experimental and had unique ideas that were not universally appealing. It's successor abandons some of those ideas and streamlines things while refining to a T. Game receives overwhelming success and acclaim, leading to a refusal to deviate from what is now the norm. AC2 is praised while AC1 is seen as outdated and an inferior older brother, rarely recognized for it's unique qualities that are still unlike a lot of games even today. It's just the matter of gaming now being dominated by a casual audience. Anything unconventional is immediately seen as bad and unmarketable. Triple A Games have to tick a certain amount of boxes or else they aren't even considered. For example, open world games must have fast travel or else it will be seen as a chore to play. The game must a ridiculous amount of content or else it will be accused of having an "empty world." (Look no further than Elden Ring's incessant amount of samey dungeons and boss arenas)

It's sad, especially considering Demon's Souls did a few things better.

100% correct. It’s a shame.

Cause it is, dark souls was suppose to be the original. Demon souls was a test to see what works so in that regard it's basically a released alpha of dark souls 1. Everything after dark souls 1 went down hill. I do not agree with what he said about bosses in ds1 defensive mechanics. Shields are still more than viable and parrying gwen is possibly the best way to beat him so he is wrong here.

@LeadFaun dark souls 2 was a content packed game but was a mess. Bloodborne I love but not as an RPG just a action game. Alot of stuff in there is pointless honestly, you can LITTERALLY start the game with the strongest weapon and never need anything else. R1 is the best way to play, you don't need to party, back stab is complicated for no reason, shield is garbage I mean it's basic at best but I love the atmosphere. Dark souls 3 is nothing but phase 2s that you expect the ENTIRE TIME with no creative freedom or creativity in different builds. Demon souls is one of the worst in the series but it's unique and I think dark souls 1 blew up for all the right reasons and demon souls did not for all the right reasons

@LeadFaun that makes it unusable bro. That's like giving someone a gun but they can't shot it until they are up close. Why would I wait till I knock him out before I can back stab em? That's ruining your chances and you have to really give up on your beliefs at that point. Just cause he found it as an improvement doesn't mean we all do and obviously not from soft sense it's simple change and it still didn't come back. Might as well not had it at all by that point. You litterally sit there charging up something behind some on then you get to stab em smh a better fix would be to not allow back stabs if someone was moving. This would make it so they have to have been in recovery frames or unaware of the person behind them. If not that just remove it entirely and just do parrying only or just reduce backstab damage to a normal heavy damage

Same here.

one can only hope, but from the gameplay shown of the new game its just anime darksouls

That's not a fromsoft game

Bandai Namco is developing Code Vein in house, because it seems that From Soft is not currently developing a souls game. A while ago it was confirmed they were working on Armored Core 6, I'd be incredibly happy if Miyazaki were the director, since his last foray was a very new direction for the series. I don't know how everybody else feels about that though, I imagine most don't wanna play a mech game.

ISneezeRazorBlades They are working on 3 games at once. One is armored core, another is a traditional souls game and one is "something weird"

So is the game a disappointment? I didn’t buy it because I really didn’t want another medieval fantasy game from FromSoft anyways. I was very satisfied with that ending with Dark Souls 3 six years ago.

​@@SaberRexZealot Someone else on here said "peak 6/10" and I'm inclined to agree. It's probably better than a lot of games in its genre, but I fucking hate open-world games and it was NOT able to overcome that for me, so yeah. Haven't been this disappointed by a game since Xenoblade Chronicles X. I think if I'd waited til the game was on sale for like half off and we'd gotten past the point where the entire internet was gushing about it simultaneously, I wouldn't feel nearly as bad about my purchase. I also think that if it were back at the start of the pandemic, where I didn't have a job, unemployment was good, and I had absolutely no social obligations or artistic aspirations, it would be a perfectly acceptable way to keep my hands occupied while I watched youtube videos on a separate monitor. I've spent a lot of time doing just that with other, worse games (MGSV and FFXV come to mind). But I also don't really remember my experience with those games fondly, and it's sad to think of FromSoft making a "podcast game" as opposed to something that actually engaged me.

@@SaberRexZealot It's pretty much what everyone expected, Dark Souls 3 but open world. It's not bad by any means but I am kind of baffled by the immense praise it's getting. It's like... come on guys, we all played this game years ago. Back then the areas were connected by a hub world or in a sort of Metroidvania style rather than by big open fields, but otherwise it's the same thing.

@@SaberRexZealot you were listening to the video, right? it's basically the same old and more of it, as well as, a "roll at the right time to win" simulator. This would be fine by me, but where I think FromSoftware dropped the ball is on Matthew's criticism of the combat forgetting the improvements of the past, like, locking Rallying behind a great rune, or forgetting that Trick weapons ever existed, or magic still being very much a glass cannon build, ranged and defensive builds being very limited compared to melee combat, or other stuff like this, as well as the combat needing to grow and evolve with the times, instead of remaining largely the same as it was in 2009, with only something as simple as a weapon art added in that really wasn't even that good or utilized that well. This is an especially big problem because of them trying to reach more challenging aspects and the way this game formula is going, it's heading straight into a wall, they're going to eventually reach a breaking point because that difficulty has a limit and that limit is called the human limit, ie, what most humans are theoretically capable of.

Didn't think I'd see my favorite Arc The Lad reviewer here. It's amazing how well a lot of these points apply to Elden Ring.

omg yes

Armors designed to appear on massive imposing bosses have no business being available for the player You're not as cool as Ornstein when you wear his set, you look like an ugly midget

Nautilus makes the art more revered

IKR I'd kill for that set even just for fashion souls!!!! T.T

@@nautilus2612 same for all the artorias running around lol

Just got a ps3 just to play DeS =P only reason to get one afaik ( happy to be proven wrong)

@@sf3testvids Red Dead Redemption is a good reason for purchasing it as well

I have it on disc for my ps3 but I wish the servers were still online. Good thing there's private servers. Just sucks cause i dont have Wi-Fi.

If you have a good pc it's fully emulatable now

I got a PS4 just to get Bloodborne. First game I've played in the series, it was amazing.

not the same series

@@BinaryDood Well a bunch of people call it the "first Souls game". Because there are surprisingly many similarities. But yes technically not.

@@BinaryDood And you could still say that Kings Field 2 is the "origin" of the "Souls series" as many ideas that ended up in Demon's Souls and subsequently other "souls games" came from Kings Field II or at least were likely inspired by it.

@@sirexilon49 really stretching the meaning of "series" there. But I see your point. Thought I can't call Symphony of the Night part of the Metroid Series because it uses the same map. Or Bioshock apart of the System Shock series because it uses the same... everything. Really, series has less to do with the contents and more to do with the perception.

@@sirexilon49 and then there is the inspiration of the king's field series itself called ultima underworld the stygian abyss which received a psx remake in japan... edit: As for symphony itself it's gameplay is a remake of Simon's Quest and the original Vampire Killer for MSX

And some of them different publishers, with potentially varying levels of ownership over IP and software implementation

​@@MikePatterson8831 Bandai-Namco has got to be a big part of the problem at this point. The games made under Sony and Activision publishing (Demon's Souls, Bloodborne, Sekiro) are far more cohesive and consistent than the Bamco-published ones (Dark Souls 1/2/3 and Elden Ring).

Great quote.

I do have one counter argument. The same can be said for any piece of art. Someone can "remaster" Starry Nights or make an animation look better with new frames or computer animation. Literally anything that has been made before can be remastered.

@@HonsHon this is painfully ignorant. Starry nights was made with clear and full understanding of the medium, any alterations would be one that the author did not want to or could not make. Same with animations. Akira for exemple, plays with frames per second to add emphasis and such. A 60 fps remaster would absolutely destroy the movie. Hell, rendering toy story at an extremely high resolution might show the inner working of shaders and textures to a point so severe it breaks immersion.

@@HonsHon obviously they CAN be remastered. But the quote insinuates that doing so destroys some artistic merits of the work.

Eh, I dunno man. That quote makes sense when you think of art like paintings, writings, and music but that’s just because those pieces are usually expressions from one single person. It doesn’t make sense to “remake” the Mona Lisa because what good would that do? It would just be another person trying to copy a painting and would lead to a separate piece of art. When you switch to collaborative works like movies or games it becomes different, because of all the different facets that could fail to express the original intention in the way they wanted. Either way, you’re not destroying art by deciding to remake a movie or a game. The original art still exists, the remake is a separate piece of art expressing similar things but using the advances in technology and technique that came after.

Yeah it feels like there's a samey element to a lot of boss fights in later games. There are no clever tricks or unique strategies for beating a lot of those bosses in the newer games. It does seem like some of the bosses in Demon's Souls were designed with more of a D & D mindset.

@@asiamatron If you are talking Old School D&D, then yes. It’s funny because the Souls series has pretty much turned into what D&D is now. Elden Ring is basically 5e at this point. There is no real strategy to it.

@@theatheistbear3117 Yeah sure looks that way.

@@asiamatron It’s funny that both franchises went into the same route. They kept the same basics but didn’t equate that the game they were making was completely different.

@@theatheistbear3117 Yeah that happens sometimes. Both franchises are so different but took the same route.

This is a cool observation. I think part of the reason Breath of the Wild surprised me so much was my expectation that it would work more like a video game than reality.

This is why SH4 is a misunderstood masterpiece, it has no dissonance between gameplay, characters and story and world which equals chunkiness, unfairness and the core of survival horror difficulty and often frustration, it's like a mature cheese not everyone can appreciate it but those that do will see that it is actually team silents most artistic game

The community loves swamp levels that's why there's atleast one in every soulsborne game. Agree with the rest

If there’s anything I’ve learned over the years, it’s that “gamers” (meaning the general gaming public) sees any kind of gameplay that isn’t explicitly entertaining as being “bad design”.

@@pramitpratimdas8198 The community absolutely does NOT. What they do love is making MEMES about swamp levels.

@@ImortalZeus13 And neglecting that purposeful "bad" design can enhance a games immersion such as Silent Hill 4s gameplay systems which were sorely misunderstood and criticized with SH4 remaining the consistently lowest rated of team silents creations, despite being their least dissonant game. Understanding this is the difference between being a "gamer" and "one who plays games", one who plays games want to kill xx amount of hours with minimal frustration neglecting the artistic component of the medium over playability or other barriers of entry.

Damn i have such big brain for hitting the obvious weakpoint of the Boss. But seriously i think the correct thing to do is make bosses being gimmick fights while having to react and engage them.

@@igorsantossouza3684 if you got 1 shot by micolash, I genuinely don't know what to tell you. Either your build is garbage or you need to locate the dodge button on your controller. And interface with that button at appropriate times.

@@igorsantossouza3684 only a little

@@igorsantossouza3684 I'm genuinely not good at souls games. I've beaten all of them, but it took a lot of tries and then occasional summoning. But even in my fumble thumbed attempts at micolash I have never once been one shot by him. I legit did not even know that was possible.

@@igorsantossouza3684 lol. Thats so true

Sekiro perfected the "quirky" bosses, as seen in the dragon fight. And i guess ER will be similar to Sekiro in many ways.

@Mohito Non-alco Sekiro was a bland and boring game. The Levels were astonishingly easy because of the weak grunt enemies and the stealth + mobility systems at hand. The world was also extremely dull. I remember playing through the first part of the game, wondering when the interesting areas and varied enemies would come. Then when I got to the abandoned dungeon, I thought I would finally enter a new interesting location. However, this section was incredibly short and led to the Senpou Temble instead, another boring unvaried location. The bosses were hard, in the sense that you had to press buttons in a specific pattern. Matthewmatosis mentions in this video, if he wanted action, he would play a better action game, but at this point you might as well rather want to play Osu!. It also continued the trend mentioned in this video. If ER "will be very similar to Sekiro" it will be as disappointing as that game. I can't help it but have low expectations for Elden Ring, given that I doubt they will stop following the trend.

@@Qlaid_ omegalul i feel sorry for you if you think that sekiro was boring

@@Qlaid_ but they said they're going back to more DS shit for ER

@Yujiro Hanma nice bait bro

Well said.

But he's saying not being held captive by your level is a fault.

Yeah but in a really one minded way that can come of quite whiny...

He is wrong about somethings like defensive mechanics not being used in boss fights outside of roll. Yes it can be true about dark souls 2 and up but not 1. High poise, shields, parrying are great ways to fight bosses alongside roll. I have a better chance against o n s with shield and high poise than rolling the whole time cause I rarely get a hit in that way and gwen I parry the life out of em.

True, but it is the best entry. I know I’d argue that, personally, even if he isn’t.

I agree that it's tough sometimes to fully appreciate a boss fight in Elden Ring because of how crazy the bosses go on you with constant attack strings full of delayed swings and AOEs. I think this issue started with DS3 when they somehow thought that Bloodborne style bosses and their manic second phases would be something that the less nimble Dark Souls player character could handle. The temptation to resort to cheese has been overwhelming ever since. I do think that Matt heaps way too much praise on Demon's Souls though (giving it credit for being different with its poison swamp and criticizing subsequent titles for having a poison swamp...I guess he doesn't know what a Fromsoft staple those have been for years before Demon's Souls, lol) and shortchanges the original Dark Souls in terms of its "soul". Demon's Souls is also a refinement of previous Fromsoft ideas, and ironically, its combat is certainly the most innovative thing (and the thing which I believe enabled people who weren't into slow paced dungeon crawler RPGs to develop an interest) about it compared to Fromsoft's previous games like the King's Field series. He also says that Gwyn's piano music was effective simply because it was different, but that's really underselling it. The sad piano music works brilliantly in the context of the game's story and lore. Not just because it sounds different. In other words, it works because of all those glowing adjectives that he invoked near the end when talking about Demon's Souls. Whether he realizes it or not, a lot of people feel that for Dark Souls and so they may not agree with him that Demon's Souls has more soul than the original Dark Souls (or Bloodborne). Does it have more soul/immersiveness than Dark Souls 2 and 3? Yeah, I think you'd get less argument there (DS2 is polarizing and DS3 is a direct story sequel to DS1).

I think it really comes back to the fact that Demons' Souls (and, theoretically, Dark Souls), were explicitly not made with the intention of being hard. Miyazaki's said over and over again that difficulty was not the point, but you CANNOT tell me that's the case anymore. When I see a boss do a crazy attack combo, I no longer thing "wow this boss/character is so cool," I think "wow, the designers are really trying to kill me with this one," or "well this pattern looks tough to learn." I love arcadey, game-ass games, Platinum is arguably my favorite studio, so I should theoretically like it when FromSoft makes something more explicitly gamey, but they're just straight-up bad at it IMO.

There's many memorable Elden Ring bosses, like Godfrey or Maliketh They are difficulty and made you butthurt but doesn't mean they aren't memorable

Honestly I feel like the Ashes system didn't go far enough despite being so heavily pushed. I like the idea of a distraction system to make bosses this fucking unwieldy more manageable, yet still a threat if you're not careful. As of now it's pretty basic.

@@antobatta1551 Just because my comment made you butthurt doesn't mean I think Elden a ring doesn't have good bosses

Yeah this is definitely one of his best videos. I'm always glad to see him look at a game nobody else has, or a new angle on a game everyone knows (that's why I love his "Abe's Odyssey" video). I've seen many people make similar criticisms of the Souls series but never with the context provided by DeS.

I agree. I typically agree with mathewmatosis, but mostly because he's explicitly stating things I already think and examined myself. This video legitimately brought up concepts and criticisms I have never really considered to such a degree. As someone entrenched in game design as a passion, this type of experience of being completely thrown and surprised is uncommon. Most people reiterate the same sort of game design philosophies. Which is fine as those standards were set for a reason, but it does mean that conversations can become stale when you have heard those opinions already or you have examined those things yourself. This video has given me a lot to think about from a design perspective.

Exactly how I feel! He's just got a good delivery and pace here. Plus it's bite-sized compared to other videos. Well done on everything.

The only way we get something like Demon Souls is if Miyazaki leaves the company and joins a bankrupt one.

Every game can be simplified into a statement like that

@@lucasandrescosta391 nup

Lucas Andres Costa The quote was about what the series has become. “It went from a game about outsmarting your opponent to a series where you press dodge at the right time.” He described his preferred experience the same way, one simple sentence. It’s just that the former is of far higher quality.

@@lucasandrescosta391 Not really. You can play tetris, and if you try to play the game by focusing on hitting buttons at certain times, you won't get very far at all. In dark souls, if all you do is focus on rolling at the right time, and attack when you don't roll, you'll be able to beat the entire game quite easily. The fact that all digital games result in pressing buttons at certain times does not mean that all game-play revolves around pressing buttons at certain times.

@@La0bouchere What i meant by my original comment is that anyone can reduce a game into a simplistic statement about it's gameplay removing all nuance about it in the process. For Tetris it would be something like "A game where you place bricks in the right spot", that statement doesn't say anything about the strategic value of the game and how hard it is to actually think about where you place the bricks in advance, to plan ahead. Same thing for the Dark Souls statement, there is much more to the game than just rolling at the right time. The statement does not say anything about how hard it is to actually dodge at the right times. What about how timings vary between bosses, how the game tries to trick you into panick rolling... You have to be smart in the way you roll, in different directions depending on enemy pattern, sometimes you would end up too far to counter attack if you roll the wrong way, the stamina management side of it, etc. Plus, Dark Souls is much more than that simple statement, what about build diversity, items enhancement, exploration, etc. You are doing the same with your statement: "In dark souls, if all you do is focus on rolling at the right time, and attack when you don't roll, you'll be able to beat the entire game quite easily." You can do the same thing with any game and make it sound easier or less complex than it actually is. "In football, if all you do is focus on passing the ball at the right time, and score when you are close to the goalie, you'll be able to win games quite easily." "In Dota 2, if all you do is focus on farming at the right time, and killing enemie heroes when they are in range, you'll be able to rise your ranking quite easily." etc, etc.

The Sekiro OST uses a lot of Japanese instruments to evoke the feeling of the setting it is in. The bombast is not lost on bosses that deserve it, such as Isshin, Gyoubu and Genichiro. The the more somber or atmospheric tracks still exist however, with examples like Emma's being more melancholic instrumentation, and the track "Apparitions" used for ghost enemies evoking a feeling of other-worldiness with the traditional whistling and low humming of the arrangement.

souls games literally dont have soundtracks

this. "just put together chanting and le epicness"

@@SurprsdPenguin A lot of fans hated Sekiro OST, I think it was the best FromSoftware OST since Demon's Souls & Dark Souls 1. Sekiro isn't exactly a "Soulsborne" game, but it had an understated OST for a FromSoftware game.

@@kageakiminato8536 Ur literally wrong but aight

The real shame is that it is so unaccessible being locked behind Ps3 while DS has gotten a remake that it didn't need, since it still was easily available on steam, (and with a fanmade patch that solved it's problems) and even worse ds2 got one that nobody asked for just a fucking year after it's release. I didn't have a Ps3 back then, had the 360, so sadly I can't give it the credit it probably deserves because I haven't had the opportunity to fucking play, even though it's been on the top of my list for a long time now. It seems that even From doesn't give it the credit it deserves, and it's kinda disgusting.

I always loved the world much more than Dark Souls. My only gripe is that it's too short. Once you are through your first time, it will never be the same again running the game. :( Also I really want them to finish the 6th archstone. The props they already made for it and the enemies are fucking amazing.

Guys, THE REMAKE IS A' COMIN'!!

I disagree, and I ultimately would rank it among the lower entries. It pains me to think this way, but I actually do agree with the consensus of it being a "Dark Souls Prototype" of sorts.

@@craylik5589 To be fair it's not FromSoft's decision how Demon's Souls is appreciated. Sony owns the IP. The PS5 remake was completely Sony's decision, with no input from FromSoftware.

I don't think you know what low and high fantasy means.

@@ArilandoArilando Low Fantasy: _"A subgenre of fantasy fiction in which magical events intrude upon an otherwise-normal world."_ This does fit Demon's Souls, as the soul arts (the source of magic in the setting) is not a natural part of the setting, but instead is something that is released upon the world whenever someone awakens and makes a deal with the Old One, as King Allant did. The kingdom the game takes place in was a mundane one until magic was reintroduced and corrupted it. High Fantasy: _"A subgenre of fantasy fiction defined by the epic (in the literary sense) nature of its setting or by the epic stature of its characters, themes or plot."_ This describes Dark Souls very well.

@@matthewmuir8884 Magic, dragons etc are an integral part of the world. What you're saying is nonsense.

@@ArilandoArilando No, not in Demon's Souls. Dragons and magic were introduced by the reintroduction of soul arts to the world; this is explained to the player at the very beginning of the game.

​@@matthewmuir8884 I do not remember the particular details, and Demon's Souls lore like all Souls games is vague, but what you're saying cannot be true as the shrine of the Dragon God is implied to be very old. There are of course also faith based miracles in the game which are not based on soul arts.

Exactly the same. This video has so much to think about despite being pretty short

Elden Ring is their most soulless game yet

@@arisumego agree. I’d rather play DS2 no cap

Ah, yes. Confirmation bias. The best form of objective reasoning. I too only search for things that agree with my viewpoint instead of realizing it is me that has different taste.

@@bin5803 lmao good job what a man of reason and cleverness you are

tbf I think that if they made some changes to Grass, it could really improve the game. Also, I think that the visual changes are overall pretty great, excluding Flamelurker. That being said, if they change World Tendency too drastically or change really anything regarding level/enemy design, it would change the experience too much for me.

@@edgali I also thought vanguard looked pretty generic. The original felt like an eastern interpretation of a western demon. Whereas the remake just looks like western demon.

@@JKSmith-qs2ii Now that the game is out we can see how "western" the game became. The fat officials and vanguard being the biggest changes. Stockpile Thomas now looks like a total wanker.

we simply wanted 6th archstone cause it was initially intended to be in the game but it was removed due to low budget

@@digitalintent in the original he looked like a aging, but still somewhat young father/husband. In the remake he looks like James Corden wearing a shitty fake moustache. Facial movements are also extremely unsettling.

lol at all the people that call demons souls bosses boring

Mathew always out here just spittin pure unfiltered facts

@@dc7981 most boring and easiest. ds2 was worse though. i did enjoy demon souls but the bosses where way too easy only old king allant was hard

@@elyasshussain5988 at least they are unique unlike the bosses in 3

It’s to the point where some long time RU-vidrs put out videos basically complaining that too many bosses in ER aren’t easily defeated with just well timed dodge rolling and they had to engage with the other mechanics.

And... how many of them has "big-stompy-aoe-10-hit-combo-finisher"? Just curious, I'm in the very beginning of the game right now

@@aldecotan Embrace your adventurous spirit and find out. Enjoy!

DS2 has an excuse and can be forgiven because of it’s horrid development cycle and that Yui Tanimura had to make some agressive changes to make the game even playable on third generation hardware. That the game came out as great as it did is a miracle. Elden Ring doesn’t really have that, plus, DS2’s DLCs really helped make the game an absolute gem. Can’t wait for the Flames of Old mod.

Hey hey hey, check it out. A person who is not a paid shill or a brainwashed mob that praises Elden Ring as 10/10 masterpiece? I hope you share my depression because every time I watch this video I am more dead inside than I was before. I miss Demon's Souls so much.

I swear the AoEs that just about every single boss has exist has a lazy counterbalance to ashes. They still can't figure out a way to make the AI any better/it still sucks balls at dealing with multiple targets. So "why not just have every boss randomly explode the ground after their 12-hit combo!" to hit all the spirits.

I keep searching for another critic to take up the mantle and achieve the same level of quality analysis. Some can match him in one aspect or another, but nobody can make such insightful observations with such tight pacing with such consistency with so much humor. I’m sad to report he’s a singular talent. We won’t see his like again.

@@siphillis I agree. Matthew obviously has talent and he didn't overstay his welcome. This video was exceptionally well made and nothing more can be said about Souls games, to be honest.

lol

@Lightstream He decided to not make his old-schooled analysis/critique videos anymore(maybe Bayonetta because dude is a Kamiya fanboy but I doubt he can pure platinum that game lol) He hates to repeat himself and in his last meta video you could tell he was done with video essays. He is also making his own video games now. Check out his Matthewmatosis Extra channel if you are interested. He streams occasionally on RU-vid. In a sense, we can all consider ourselves graduating from the Matthewmatosis academy. You no longer need Matthew to tell you how to think about a game since everyone has his own frame of reference as he said in his (former) last video.

Give Noah Cadwell Gervais a watch. His writing and perspective definitely matches Matthews.

@@amysteriousviewer3772 not to sound rude but I don't think they are even comparable

@@ShadowedAgony To each their own, I personally find Noah very insightful and well spoken.

@@amysteriousviewer3772 My (admittedly limited) experience with NCG has been that he mostly just says a lot of flowery words that ultimately mean nothing, or are outright incorrect.

@@EmberBright2077 Couldn’t disagree more but as I said, to each their own. Noah just has a very different approach to other creators. He looks at games more holistically and how they fit into the broader canon of media and pop culture that influenced and inspired them and less from a game design perspective like Mathew does. I can see why some would find this boring and “meaning nothing” but I personally find it fascinating.

I love FromSofts games but oh my god this is the best comment ever, so fucking true lol.

Remember "Sekiro is a rythm game"

@@Lastninjaxoxoxoxox I actually don't hate this about Sekiro just for the fact that it's at least different. There's a lot I dislike about Sekiro, and the final boss alone was just hair-pulling enough to make me never replay the game, but I came away from every boss feeling like a boss myself. Of course, that doesn't really translate to Elden Ring, because the bosses have evolved (as they have continuously done with each Dark Souls) yet the player character's abilities have hardly changed.

@@lorangemagnifique3001 And that's fine if that's the type of bosses you prefer, it seems in the community a lot of ppl shares this notion which is why they want "learn the moveset" bosses and not so called "gimmick" bosses. But you can get the same feeling from a boss-rush game. Infact they might even have more fleshed out combat than the souls series and makes you feel like even more of a boss. I'd like to think the souls series went for something different, atleast in the beginning. Unfortunately I don't even share this feeling of feeling like a boss. When I beat "learn the moveset" boss #10 in a row (like there were so many of in ds3) I don't feel like a boss, I feel like I just wasted my time learning this AIs moveset with no other real experience to be had from this.

@@lorangemagnifique3001 tbf, sekiro is an *extremely* sastisfying system to learn and master and it's a different IP with a different approach. Elden Ring has literally no excuse since it's basically just Dark Souls.

It's world was just that much more magical, felt more tragic. Maybe it was because you entered the world right after tragedy and everything looked like Order had just recently fallen apart. In Dark Souls and Dark Souls 3 it seems like the new way of the world has long been established. You arrive centuries after all the important stuff has happened, to the point that even the big bads have hollowed away. It feels more abandoned, but not in a good way. I guess the lack of changes from World Tendency also give that feeling.

For what it's worth I bought a PS3 to play Demon's Souls back in the day. For me it was the system seller. I was super stoked for Dark Souls when it came out after that, but even that isn't as good as the original I don't think.

To be fair, a lot of that can be blamed to the fact that Demon's Souls was a PS3 exclusive in a time where the PS3 was still playing catch up to the 360 and the PC was emerging again. Not only that but Sony was afraid to advertise it, sort of what they did to Gravity Rush this generation. And the cherry on top of the pie was that Dark Souls 1 released a year and half after so most people who heard a few positive things about Demon's Souls just went straight to the sequel instead, especially 360 and PC players for obvious reasons.

It was hardly dubbed a failure. When it was released it was getting high review scores in a lot of gaming magazines/websites, with a Metacritic of 88. Even IGN gave it a 9.4/10. It may not have taken off in the mainstream like dark souls, but it was critically acclaimed from the start,

Like fine fuckin’ wine if I say so myself.

Why did you have to do Sen's Fortress again? Did you not open the elevator shortcut with the cage key?

Difficulty has a lot of depth when your enjoyment from it comes from gatekeeping and bragging rights.

And it's weirder still when Dark Souls kinda has a pitiful lack of difficulty. It's telling about a game's balance when before you start the game, everyone tells you which builds to avoid due to them trivialising and breaking the game. Deaths only get less and less meaningful too, as the more rapidly you die, the fewer souls you build up between deaths, lowering the incentive to avoid dying. As such, there's no real penalty to endlessly dying to work out a boss' attack patterns, memorising them outside of the boss room and then steamrolling them once you're there. The game's difficulty comes purely from how well you can rote learn a very basic rhythm, effectively.

It's the reason I prefer to make a clear distinction between "challenge" and "difficulty". To me, "challenge" is how much I have to understand the game's mechanics, the current situation, be observant, etc., while "difficulty" is just how mechanically hard something is; i.e. how narrow the window to press the roll button at the right time is and stuff like that. Souls games, especially the later ones, are pure difficulty with very little in the way of challenge.

my biggest issue with souls has always been the conversation surrounding it. I dislike that its considered "the hard series" when that really isnt the case. Souls games push discovery and the players actions to the forefront and make you feel like you are in its world more intensely than any other game series I've seen. With that sense of immersion comes a sense that you have to react to the world in a realistic and not half assed behavior. In short, I feel that you cant make a compelling souls experience without it being punishing, but that isnt what I think the games' biggest emphasis is.

@@matthewmuir8884 I find this seperation to be somewhat limiting with certain games. After reading your comment I was trying to think of games I played that fall into either category...one I was stuck with was Megaman games...are they more challenging or difficult? They (the bosses specifically) are notorious for having a set pattern you have to memorize to beat them...sounds kinda like dark souls, except sometimes they are pretty cheap...forcing you to analyse the nature of thier attack patterns and the guns you have before you memorize the exact attack pattern via muscle memory. So in a sense its a bit of both...but I guess that depends on where you draw the arbritrary line between "strategy" and "skill" since objectively strategy is just skill in slow motion. (People who perfer strategy games over skill tend to like taking their time to plan things out where as skill is usually the opposite.) This doesn't even take into account reacting to things...what if your reacting to things that you aren't used to? Then its adaptation? What if a boss was so well designed that it started to change its pattern the second you adapt? Is that more strategy or skill then? I suppose not being pertentious about your defenition and just looking at the general message your saying...I guess I can conclude (with the dark souls games anyways) that the problem is that the combat inofitself is not very complicated. This lack of complication prevents nuanced "challenge" as you put it so since its not improved upon you either rely on gimmicks or design the bosses with skill in mind. The solution would be to make the combat more in depth so that there's a more balanced mix. Maybe the souls games are just 3D megaman games in design philosophy now that I think about it...hmm...

Good, it's not just me. Elden Ring has such a unique world to explore but it plays it so safe with the boss fights. I'm at the end of the game now, right before the final fight and I'm just sick of it. Almost every boss feels copy and pasted with a different skin and some actually are just that.

The problem is that Souls combat is basically solved, so any boss that isn't a twitch reaction test full of tricky timings is going to be laughably easy.

@@mattweber2512 Flamelurker, Fume Knight, Sir Alonne and Darklurker are still hard even if you know what they do so I disagree with that assessment. But if it is solved, then why not dramatically change how these games are played? Why not do what FF7R did and alter the combat?

@@theatheistbear3117 I agree, that's what they should do. I thought Sekiro was a step in this direction, but Elden Ring seems to have regressed back to the Souls mean.

@@mattweber2512 I personally hated Sekiro but you are right. It was very different from the other games.

LoP rocks. Enjoy it!

Lol not surprised at finding you in this comment section sir, I often read you and agree with you in LOTF's reddit.

I wasn't even interested in LOTF until I heard more "it's more like DeS/DS1 than later FROM games" on the level you said. I agree with pretty much everything you said. It's sad when one of the complaints of an adventure focused games, and LOTF around launch, was that "the bosses are too easy". It's like they only see bosses as how high that can get a death counter tracking how many times they've died learning their patterns rather than the actual experience, uniqueness, and context around fighting it.

I think that the enemies and bosses made this combat fun; If I think back to my favourite bosses in the series, all I did was dodging and light attacking, but I still love them, because their design compliments this simple combat system, by them doing the complex things

@@gottdashochstewesen4902 fully agreed. he says he could just play a better action rpg but outside of monster hunter i cant think of a game that isn't a soulslike which has the sort of boss quality bloodborne ds3 and elden ring have and even if they do the player also feels more overpowered.

The lack of depth is what makes it great imo. I don't need 100+ different moves and combos for a combat system to be fun, the simplicity is what makes is engaging.

@@livingfailure He said better action game not action rpg

​@@livingfailurehe said action game. DMC etc have way better action for example.

"When it's a foregone conclusion that every fight is a dodge and punish affair, they lose their impact." I really don't understand why this sentence is repeated throughout the video. I didn't play Demon souls, only DS1/2/3 BB Sekiro ER. But i can barely count on 2 hands the number of bosses that are not that.

@@lenain3932 That's exactly because you didn't play Demon's Souls, most bosses in that game are puzzle/strategy bosses. Only four bosses are strictly speaking "usual Souls affair", those being Penetrator, False King Allant, Maneaters and Flamelurker. As a lot of examples of what I mean by puzzle/strategy bosses, Phalanx is about using the throwables you've scavenged throughout the level to defeat it's legion, Tower Knight is about defeating the archers shooting down at you and then hitting it's ankles, Dragon God is a stealth boss where you have to hide while it's searching for you, Old Monk is fighting a player that gets summoned as the boss, Adjudicator is resistant everywhere in his body but on his weak spot, which knocks it down to be vulnerable, Storm King was the first of the "get weapon in the arena to fight the boss" trope that's followed by Yhorm in DS3 and Rykard in ER, Maiden Astraea doesn't even fight you and is just guarded by her knight. Demon's is just full of cool little unique experimental moments you won't find anywhere else in other Souls games. Hence why the title of "Lost [Soul] Arts" of the video.

@@arkaua ah ok , thanks for explaining

To be fair, Elden Ring is a masterpiece on so many levels. Although I do feel like the boss fights have become more of a rhythm/memorization game rather than a strategy game.

@@arkaua I would even add that because most fights in Dark Souls 1 didn't have excessive tracking you actually could outsmart bosses enough to where you hardly if ever had to evade, so you could find openings for big attacks, charged up moves/spells and/or combos. That's a distant relic of a bygone age since Dark Souls 2 since everything has excellent poise, you don't anymore (not a meaningful amount anyways), and most things now track and do massive combos faster than anything in the first two games of the series. So yeah, as you said in the original post... it's really sad how things turned out.

What? No. Zelda wishes it had bosses as creative and unique as Demon's Souls. Are you for real? 90% of Zelda bosses are about shooting a big monster in the eye.

I personally think that the less gimmicky bosses fit the soulsborne franchise better. Demon's Souls bosses to me are always either decent challenges or MASSIVE pushovers (cough leechmonger cough adjudicator) But instead of getting one or the other type of boss design, I think From should try to balance it out. Get a few good bosses testing your dodging, stamina management, and healing, then throw in a well designed gimmick boss to mix it up.

@@drbuni That's just not true at all; have you played a Zelda game?

@@matthewmuir8884 how is that not true? Shooting a big monster in the eye is code for the dungeon item being the key for every boss. It's obviously uninteresting and everyone knows it but they've never changed it

@@kie2 What wasn't true was the claim that anywhere close to 90% of the bosses operate that way; when it does appear, it's usually for the tutorial boss and only the tutorial boss.

So, nothing was improved after DS3? Hard to believe. I still haven't played it yet, only watching reviews

Couldn’t have said it better myself. I’m so disappointed with ER. It’s just dark souls 3 with a bit of running around in between the same bosses we’ve had since artorius.

@@aldecotan I wouldn't say NOTHING's been improved, but it REALLY does feel like a soft reboot of Dark Souls in a more commercially safe genre. The new parts are boring and the good parts are old. It's still better than a lot of other games, but for me at least, it's a disappointment. Dark Souls 3 was explicitly about moving on from endlessly repeating cycles of stagnation and decay, and yet FromSoft decided to go ahead and link the first flame again.

@@GreavesEc as someone who really disliked ds3 because of the linearity and over abundance of simple action bosses, I've enjoyed Elden Ring a lot and have found a lot of the bosses, though not all, to be at least less of a roll fest and simply more straightforward. there are apparently some puzzle like bosses as well. And it's not a bootleg bloodborne like 3 so I'm more than satisfied lol i think it's to just let ER be it's own thing. We have Demons Souls and the remake, it would do FROM no use to just repeat that exact formula for a new game.

@@aldecotan the combat and build variety is better

I was looking for this kind of comment. Can you say a little more about Elden Ring? I can't play it by myself and gameplay seems to be unchanged after ds3

@@aldecotan I haven’t finished it yet but Matt’s video is spot on about the problems with the combat. The bosses have gotten a lot more extravagant and have various ranged moves, gap closers, etc while player options have not meaningfully improved. Plenty of bosses have “gotcha” animations that are just annoying and needlessly pad out fights where you’re often only able to take two or three hits before needing to heel. As for combat, you’re still cycling through magic, items, etc clumsily and it becomes deflating when you go know that you’re going to have to hunker down and eventually memorize the boss move set. They feel far less satisfying to beat now probably because we’ve played all this before, now with just more bullshit. The animation delays oftentimes fly in the face of physics itself and make many bosses look like Dancer of the Boreal Valley. Moreover the open world is not well justified either, as fighting enemies becomes extremely tedious and unrewarding, traversal is not unique or challenging, and you’re not exactly dealing with the elements or random encounters. The exploration doesn’t always reward you either and at times it saps joy out of going places. This would be less annoying in the other games because you don’t have to run around as much, but Elden Ring is stuffed with padding and becomes a slog if you’re not an ultra hardcore souls fan. I hope Matt makes a review of Elden Ring because he would have a lot to say about the open world design.

@@5ifth you are just stating random things and/or repeating what matthewmatosis said in the videoa and applying it to elden ring, like for example you say that the players' actions were not meaningfully improved when ER has far wider viable moveset than any souls game, because in dark souls as a melee character you were pretty much limited to like 3 viable actions: R1 attacks, rolling and sometimes blocking, which became weaker in next titles, but still pretty reliable. Most R2s were useless, because spamming R1s did more damage anyway, especially during bossfights and parrying or backstabs didn't work on bosses. Elden Ring actually uses all of those mechanics and adds a few more. Pretty much every move you have is useful (besides backstep why was it ever in any souls game?) because you can break enemy's posture with heavy attacks, guard counters, jump attacks and parrying can be used more often on bosses/minibosses. You also have dozens of switchable weapon skills. Mathewmatosis had a problem that the game supposedly focusing more on action while not deeping the combat, but ER has better and deeper combat, so what's the problem with that?

Radhan is basically everything wrong with Fromsoft's boss design

@@5ifth I disagree that player options have not changed. Heavy attacks stagger and are optimal for aggressive play, but require smart timing. Weaponarts/skills have been buffed to be viable, allowing for more potential combos, not to mention sleeping debuff, or summoning trash mobs that deal no damage to the boss but take agro from the boss for a while, but not long since you hitting them makes them target you again. If you are smart, you can cheese lot of the bosses in the game, but some might consider it cowardice. Overall the combat is slightly deeper and more complex in classic other action game ways and rather then being copy of ds3 as everybody is talking about, it is rather the equivalent to ds3 as Dark Souls was to Demon Souls. Not much innovation, increased size of the map, combat polish and so on. Though the lack of gimmicky bossfights is kinda sad. One of my favourite bossfights in the game are the Crystallian dudes in mines, because they have very smart gimmick to them where you cant damage them with normal weapons, and have to use blunt weapons to shatter them, which imo was really well done gimmick unlike most of ds3 gimmick bossfights.

I'm kinda surprised how often people bring this issue. Do people not use shields? Lies of P kinda sorta solves this issue by having attacks that are difficult to dodge but easy to block/parry. All without the need of having to carry a shield so people can't call you a pussy

​@@pramitpratimdas8198we do not use shields. It costs too much stamina and the multihit attack patterns from most bosses make them impossible to use.

@@wuwei473 use greatshields and/or barricade shield ash

@@pramitpratimdas8198 The greatshields still have the same problem, except for the thumbprint one.

@@wuwei473 you are not supposed to block every attack positioning still matters

Personally I felt that Micolash was interesting, but hindered by his attacks. He would constantly spam Augur and Call Beyond which made the fight portion boring since you’re just strafing or dodging the same two attacks, unless he tried an occasional punch which didn’t exactly require any strategy. On the contrary, the running sections were a unique twist, I liked that if you were keeping pace with him you could slip through the gate at the end, though finding the path around from above was also enjoyable. Yet a slight mistime in dodging in the attack phase could result in a one-shot and thus running through the same path again became tedious.

Funnily enough my only issue with Micolash is actually that he can be hardcore difficult on higher NG+ cycles. At a certain point, his A Call Beyond spell legit one shots you. You have to move in close to him quickly so he doesn't use it, but that's usually hard to do when you've just dropped down for phase 2. He usually gets off at least one cast of A Call Beyond, and if you get hit, you're dead, unless you have insane HP and insane Arcane resistance.

People don't like Micolash because he's cheap.

I found him somewhat entertaining the first time, every other time he’s an annoying time waster.

Or maybe it's the fact that the Gehrmans & Marias reiterate upon an old, successful-- or at least non-broken formula, where Micolash is a new, experimental concept of which From doesn't stick the landing. You don't need to be partial to difficulty to recognize Bed of Chaos & Dragon God's shortcomings. Personally I think Micolash fails in most of the same ways Frenzy does.

I’d be inclined to agree but it seems the developers themselves don’t even appreciate the unique aspects of their game

alturius4 Man, I feel the same way about ceaseless discharge. I felt so clever when I hide in one of the crevices in the rock, then proceeded to beat the hell out of his arms/tentacles when he tried to hit me. Kind of cheesy, but clearly intended by the devs.

Dark Souls has a few of those Things. For example i remember how amazing my first fight against the abyss watchers was, when i noticed that the third one attacked the other 2 watchers. You can use the area against a lot of bosses like aldrich, Crystal sage, ancient wyvern, yhorm, twin princes.

“Timing and memorizing animations”

Pontiff Sulyvahn is a bad example to use because he has the shade in phase 2 that does what the real Sulyvahn does in advance and you can use to your advantage if you figure out how it works

@@dkDolphino You prove my point. DS3 bosses are all cases of "Bash your head against the boss wall and be sure they crack first" rather than using the environment to create strategies. DS3 bosses are for 90% "Simon says roll" fights. And those kind of fights are okay, but Sulyvhan is rolling and wait for a chance to strike. While some of the bosses in previous game gave you the chance to CREATE your own oppertunities

That skipping rope analogy is genius, I gotta remember that.

I definitely agree with you on the music especially. Too much of the music in the later games are grand orchestral musics that on their own are good but really not memorable

yeah but at least in ds3 you can consitantly avoid damage by jumpingh on the rope. In the early games you pretty much must have a shield or the whole game crumbles into nothing

@@HoneyDoll894 I dunno man I never used a shield for Dark Souls 1. I can't speak for Demon's Souls because I sucked too much at that game when it released.

@@MrCompassionate01 in my experience ds1 feels very inconsistent and even with very low weight the roll still always feels too slow and clumsy

I agree. They have too much of a hard-on for Miyazaki. It’s ironic that DS2 got the most criticism thrown at it when the other games have the same problems; if not worse.

@@theatheistbear3117 I never thought I would utter the words... but some parts of Elden Ring have me going "they did this better in DS2" or even the dreaded "I would rather play DS2". I've stopped short of including "and the DLCs" though :P

@@revu34 The reused enemies are horrendously bad in Elden Ring. You fight Crucible Knight three times as a boss and multiple times in the open world as a regular enemy FFS. And that’s just *one* boss! DS2 only reused bosses once and kept it at that. And yes the DLCs of DS2 is incredible. That’s how the game would’ve been if the development time wasn’t cut by two years (it was supposed to be a 2016 title for fourth generation consoles, which is why the detailed lighting had to be scrapped). It’s honestly impressive what they accomplished given the constraints they were under.

it seems like FromSoft fanboy biggest achievement in life is finishing "hard" game...

"Bro, why don't you like Elden Ring?" "Because I've beaten it four times already."

I had a friend threaten to block me for harassment because i shared my less than stellar opinion of the game while i played through it. Said he refused to ever talk about this game with me ever again unless it was more positive. He was pretty normal until this game came out. Im honestly perplexed that a series that was once quite reflective and solemn has attracted such a cult like appraisal for all the things it no longer is.

@@TheEnigmaStyle YO FORREAL THAT’S TOXIC AS FUCK. I saw someone say that “people harp on the reused animations because it’s one of the only valid criticisms of the game” and like, I get that the game has a lot of polish, but the hype train has really poisoned the discourse HARD. I avoid talking to my friends about it because I’m paranoid my miasma of depression will become contagious. Your friend telling you to stop talking to them about it is some utter toxic bullshit though and I’m so sorry you have to go through that.

Keys?? Jingling??? Where?!!!

@@phirmth I had a similar experience yesterday evening while watching a Souls streamer play Elden Ring on Twitch. I got dogpiled on not just by the people in chat, but the STREAMER as well, just because I brought up things I didn't like about Elden Ring. They erroneously jumped to the conclusion that I hate Elden Ring, when I wasn't even that harsh on the game. I had to clarify that I like the game, I'm just critical of its flaws. Apparently that wasn't good enough for them though, since some dumbshit Souls fanboy replied to me saying "Who cares about the flaws?". As if I'm somehow an idiot for bringing up major flaws that tarnish the memorable experience you're supposed to have playing these games. The fact that I can't even go 5 seconds without being barraged by Souls fanboys for being critical of the game is absolute horseshit. A lot of people say "it's just a vocal minority, the Souls community are actually really helpful!", but I find that harder and harder to believe, with all the incidents I've seen with other content creators regarding the Souls community. If I didn't already hate the Souls fanbase before Elden Ring, I certainly do now thanks to the discourse surrounding this game...

That and the propensity to consider criticism of game design as a skill issue, apparently unironically.

Arcane Kinship’s response video basically.

It's even worse when you go and watch any of Matthew's videos on Dark Souls. There are loads of things he praises about DS1 while drawing direct comparisons to how they're better than what DeS did. But yeah, no, totally just blind nostalgia.

Personally I think it’s a pointless video that he tries to justify by making up false points that don’t exist. Like, when he said “something soul players don’t want to admit is the combat is rather simple” but this is the sole reason why ppl like these games, this isn’t a bad thing and no one claims that dark souls combat ISNT simple. It just seems like he’s tired of the souls textbook design which is fine but don’t try and drag others and what they think for the sake of ur boredom.

I completely agree, I played DSII and Bloodborne first, but Demon Souls is the first one I finished so I really wanted that level of detail in other games in the series. I do still like all the entries in the series tho, idk what people think about Sekiro but I'm a sucker for over the top action so I love it

I went DaS1->DaS2->BB->DeS->DaS3. Demon's Souls is probably my favorite overall, followed closely by BB and DaS1, both who do some things better, but lacks in other areas.

that Demon's Souls by far is the best ADVENTURE (as was brilliantly pointed out in the video). The overall atmosphere, the sounds, the silence, Flamelurker's and Manhunters boss themes that add to the feeling that the boss is going to be a big challenge... It's all there" all these things are done better in new gen souls games. frankly this whole video can be boiled down to nostalgia.

I was really hesitant to play Demon's Souls as I knew it didn't have interconnected world. After finally trying it out for the first time this year via emulation, I'm suprised to say it even surpasses Dark Souls 1 for me. So no, it's not just nostalgia. There's a lot of things Demon's Souls simply did better when it comes to level design, world building and atmosphere.

I love DS2 the most but DeS has absolutely the best atmosphere out of all the games. Flamelurker’s theme still gives me chills. My personal list is DS2 > DeS > BB > DS1 > DS3 > ER.

I wouldn't say so, if we stick to the analogy that ds3 only has 1 type of boss, than elden ring has at least 2, since it has a lot of visually interesting fights, instead of mechanically interesting

Not only are the boss fights mechanicaly the same, they're copied and pasted in a different part of the map.

the comment about anime hits home after finishing Elden Ring too. anime sucks

The comment about bosses having attacks that hold their wind-up just a half-second longer than you'd expect feels about 15 times as accurate about ER.

the samey fights are more of a result of content bloat with repeat fights instead of actual lack of variety. Elden ring is WAY more varied than ds3 was but it can feel the other way because of the sheer amount of bosses and the natural bias of remembering negative experiences better.

You're giving Demon's Souls way too much credit if you think FROM would've gone with the refinement of existing areas. they tend to just leave them be which is why demon's souls doesn't really have the best areas in their games.

@@LN.2233 I’d disagree, honestly. Each area is pretty great. There is a lot of interesting ways to travel (such as the long or short way at the Flamelurker Level that you can use). But that’s up for debate. There are certainly areas in each game that do things different or better than the other.

@@ephemeralsolidity1004 I kind of hoped that jumping would’ve been the main way you’d dodge attacks. I don’t know if you’ve played *Salt and Sanctuary* but that game allows you to air dash around the first third of the game and then a second use later on, which is very handy against the later bosses in the game. Given that Torrent can double jump this mechanic wouldn’t come out of left field, as it already kind of exists. Just imagine how much cooler Maliketh’s fight would’ve been if that was in the game, let alone the wall grabbing. Swinging around in the air as you go from pillar to pillar. Now *that* would’ve been a great fight.

Dude, apply to From Soft now, all of those are such cool ideas

If Snowy mountaintops were more like DeS, you would need to move in the vast landscape with blinding snowstorm that could potentially freeze your character to death and destroy your armor. You would need to find shelters scattered in the area to keep your character warm. Kind of like frigid outskirts from Ds2 minus the snowstorm that could ruin your character. (Actually, the ice reindeers kind of work as the element in the snowstorm that hurts the player and you need to be inside a ruined building for them to not attack and spawn on you)

Amen. And don't forgot a -SPOILER- sudden mandatory dungeon before rhe final boss. Which, I feel it's just there for padding.

one of the things I rarely see people bring up is the lack of tank builds allowed in Souls games beyond Dark Souls 1. I loved wielding a giant hammer with a hulking suit of armor, you aren't mobile while doing it, so you take lots of damage, but the amount you take is severely reduced which allows you to be very aggressive, albeit very slow as well. this is practically impossible in the future games, especially ER, good luck using a giant strength weapon against most any boss without having to intermittently spam rolls away from their massive attack chains or god forbid try and tank through them with heals. now you HAVE to be super mobile and you HAVE to be doing insane damage, every build must be a glass cannon if you don't want to spend 10 minutes or more on just one of these horrendously boring bosses.

Don't make farting noises with your mouth

@@smwg4187 Don't climb ladders you didn't goddamn fawking earn Winnie!

Desmond Brown It's comical how fanboys constantly bring up the posture breaking as a justification that Elden Ring's bosses are COMPLETELY different from Dark Souls 3's bosses, when really both game's bosses are two sides of the same coin. On my RL1 NG+7 playthrough, I tried using charged R2s and jumping R2s to break the bosses' poise, but the poise numbers on NG+7 are so absurdly high that poise breaks rarely happened, if at all.. At that point, the bosses were literally just Dark Souls 3 bosses with even less downtime and even more blatant input reading, as if Dark Souls 3 wasn't already guilty with that stuff. The only bosses I managed to poise break on NG+7 were Margit and Godrick, and that's only because those bosses had opportunities just long enough for me to get in charged R2s and jumping R2s. The issue with Elden Ring's bosses is that even though poise breaking does allow them to be approached somewhat differently to Dark Souls 3's bosses, it still has the same issue of bosses feeling same-y and homogenised. The only difference is that instead of every boss being about pressing the roll button at the right time, it's now that every boss is about piling on poise damage and hoping to Gwyn that you get a poise break, due to the baffling omission of a poise bar...

Since when? What fromsoft games released since this video aired? Elden Ring had obviously a different focus but still showed some great unexpected ideas

@@pawlogates There was Sekiro, which leaned very heavily into action part of action RPG. The light stealth mechanics and movement were new and cool, but the main combat boils down to "press attack and block with good timing" far more than before.

@@pawlogates Since Dark Souls 2, arguably. Elden Ring may have different focus, but the template it used is literally the exact same as Soulsborne with slight changes, hence why it still falls under the same criticisms.

@@slinger8839 I don't think it's fair to drag Sekiro into the equation. They never advertised it as an RPG or Souls games, the game is too different to be criticized in the same manner as Soulsborne. Besides, those who think that its main combat boils down to "press attack and block with good timing" definitely didn't care enough to explore all the other options that the game actually offers, and it's not in the same vein as Bloodborne's transforming weapons, hence I'm questioning people ability to truly assess the game's quality.

@@slinger8839 i think thats way too oversimplified. Sekiro has very complex combat with few simple systems.

Even if you could kill NPCs in certain areas, merchant deaths are meaningless since they drop an item that can be given to an unkillable merchant in Roundtable Hold to unlock the dead merchant's entire inventory. Really, murdering merchants is only beneficial since all their goods can then be bought from a single easy-to-access merchant.

Are you SERIOUSLY complaining that an already punishing game has a minor contrivance to prevent you from irrevocably fucking up your entire playthrough?

@@SpoonyBard88 yes. Why? Cause my mind is curious and I wanna see what would happen.

@@SpoonyBard88 It’s the choice of the player to screw themselves over. If killing the merchant has no consequences it’s meaningless.

@@KillianC1C2 I feel genuinely sorry that you are incapable of suspending such a minor disbelief. For the record, there is a diagetic reason for not being able to kill the characters in the hold.

For the first few hours of the game, I didn't realise that you could fast travel- so when I got caught in the teleportation trap to Caelid, I had to find my way back to Limgrave through an area for which I was massively underlevelled. It may have been a mindboggling show of obliviousness/stupidity on my part, but it gave me a sense of adventure and danger (like that of earlier Fromsoft titles) that was woefully absent once I discovered fast travel. Because of that, it was probably the highlight of the game for me. Fast travel is truly a detriment to this game. Elden Ring has a huge and beautifully crafted world, but you can never appreciate the scale and diversity of it because, once you've trotted around for long enough, every location in the game is two button-presses away. It completely triviliases the aesthetic experience, and you have less incentive to fully explore areas before moving on because you can just teleport back there whenever you want; but that's only the least of it. Along with the ridiculous frequency of Sites of Grace, you never have to make plans or consider how you're going to get somewhere, as, besides the generic dungeons where fast travel is disabled, there is no risk and no consequence to pushing through an unknown area: as long as you're not in combat, you don't have to worry about how you're getting back. Even dropping runes is far less nerve-wracking than earlier titles. And since the stakes are always so low, that wonderful feeling of relief once you get to a safe area (which, as far as I'm concerned, was the best part of Dark Souls) is practically non-existent. The worst part is that I'm not sure there's any quick, moddable solution to the issue. Enemy and level design is balanced around the ability to fast travel, so replacing it with a system more akin to Dark Souls 1 (with fewer Sites of Grace and a limited, more diegetic warp system) would probably make the game very boring and frustrating; boss runs would be absolutely out of the question, for a start.

I think the dumbest part about the teleportation traps is that they teleport you most of the time near a site of grace; so instead of getting the feeling that I actually got trapped I end up getting spoiled about 3 late-game areas instead which just removed any fun of exploring new things I had lol They also should've changed a lot of filler dungeons into the cool ones in late-game; the looping one was fun, teleporting chest dungeon was nice and the invisible floor one reminded me of the crystal cave in a good way. Instead you end up with 50+ dungeons with only 4 unique ones while the rest is super formulaic where you can predict the outcome of each type of dungeon.

If Elden Ring endgame bosses means Malenia I disagree because I hate that boss but if it means Godfrey then I like that

Good on ya

Elden Ring is super boring, and the GRRM writing threw away what I loved about From Software writing / world building.

@@drbuni GRRM didn't write any of it

atleast elden ring kept the ashen estus system, the best healing system theyve done so far

@@pollertry4003 he wrote the backstory and lore, essentially everything that happens up until your tarnished arrives. the actual player storyline is all FromSoft

I think that's not giving 3 enough credit, though. Because it is also very intricate in it's level design, although I agree that a lot of things are just in there because they are a "staple" at this point. LIKE THAT GODDAMN SWAMP!

the first castlevania game too

@Nosferatu Zodd What are you talking about, no one even likes Dark souls 2 nowdays it seems and alot of stuff was removed in DS3 and brought back to DS1 Style. Also not sure about your interpretation of the world hated you in DS1, i felt more like the chosen one and everyone tryed to help me... somehow and went mad at some point. Gothic 1 has a world which shows you that everyone hates you :D

High quality comment, I completely agree.

You make a good point and Joseph Anderson talks about this in his RU-vid critique on Fallout 4 ( the second video he did on the game). When Fallout 4 focuses more on the action it will be compared to other games which focus on action. It will look quite watered down by comparison. The funny thing about Bethesda's Fallout is it seems incapable of doing both: it either has decent combat but crap RPG mechanics or decent RPG mechanics and crap combat. Even when it has decent combat that combat still pales in comparison to other action games. Matthew's point about how other action RPGs do the same thing is valid.

@@asiamatron Joseph Anderson is a complete tool but he brings up a lot of good points at times. I really enjoyed his DS2 videos, though I am even more positive than he is on the game, which was still very positive.

@@theatheistbear3117 and why that exactly?

@@shrouls Because he doesn’t take criticism very well when people point out that he uses subjective and objective statements interchangeably (for example calling *SOMA* not a horror game, or saying horror games “aren’t scary”), and when confronted about it he made an entire video doubling down on “subjectivity being implied,” and generally misconstruing the arguments people were making.

@@theatheistbear3117 this is not enough to call him a "complete tool". His videos are subjective, same for matthewmatosis and every critic whether they admit to it or not. I do not see the issue with this and outside of his horror games don't scare me video his work is on par with the best on this site

It’s what happens when you’re a gifted writer, have immense foresight but not much actual influence lol. Matthew is wonderful but he’s also not that big in the grand scheme of RU-vid. Even if he was it’s doubtful it would have changed much as people still look at Demon’s Souls as a prototype and DS3 as a direct improvement. Also I highly suggest sorting by new if you want to be reminded of the ignorance people still have towards this video

I have the same feeling when people shit on Bed of Chaos all the time. That's actually one of my favourite bosses of DS1 at this point.

DeliciousDishes problem is it's done with Dark Souls' clunky movement and makes it an absolute pain to play against. You don't feel like a heavy knight, you feel more like someone who has been smothered in peanut butter.

+DeliciousDishes How is that even possible? Lol. Micolash I can understand, but Bed of Chaos? I can't even conceive of anything likable about that boss.

+Rayne looks cool, sounds cool, mixes things up and I really like the idea of the area being the enemy and not the boss itself. Legitimately the only problem I see with it are random firestorms on the branch or inside the tree that you can't dodge (also maybe the checkpoints).

+happy joker that might be the case for you. I like to fight Bed of Chaos more than I like acclaimed bossfights like Artorias or bossfights that I think are atrocious that get hyped for some reason (Ivory King and Friede are the worst fights in the entire series).

Alberto Ocada My only issue with Demon Souls stems from how little I cared for replaying it. Gimmick bosses that provide variety are fine for a run, but as Dark souls taught me with the four lord boss fights. When you know the gimmick, mastering the fight doesn't feel as empowering. Absorbing patterns and playing off what you know, to me anyway.. does feel empowering. That's why I personally gravitate towards 2, 3, and Bloodborne. I'm also a sucker for having build variety and not having too many weapons that feel similar.

Jeremiah S It's funny that you say that because to me Demon's Souls is one of most replayable, granted for me it's because of the open structure. It's really up to how you consume these games, if you tend to replay them often then the "gimmick" bosses will lose their charm really fast, while the more mechanically challenging can still put up a fight even if you know them realy well.

Of all time? That sounds kind of dramatic.

@@jimreid5 ?

lol

When Margit whipped out his first extremely delayed attack, Matthew was the first thing that came to my mind.

@@MrMannnMannn it looked so janky right?

@@doctordice2doctordice210 Yeah. Considering that the combat still lacks depth it was funny to think that after all these years they really sat down and said “longer anticipation phases and tighter dodge windows. No use of the environment even though this is an open world game.”

@@MrMannnMannn I literally heard the word "camera-eating montrosity" in Matthew's voice when I fought bosses like the Ulcerated Tree of Garbage, Generic Giant and the Foreskin Duo...

thunderingnova Yeah, the Paleblood Hunt was a great read.

"The story was good because of fanfiction that I read after playing it" - Dark Souls "lore" fans in a nutshell.

its not fanfiction but rather someone trying to piece together what happened before and throughout the game. Redgrave talks about only what is in the game before delivering his opinion on what it all means. I assume you did not read it since you truly believe is fanfiction and i really recommend you give it a try. Bloodborne is not like other souls games when it comes to lore. In dark souls you can clearly piece together what happened to someone through in game item descriptions and environmental clues but in Bloodborne there is a lot unexplained things due to the secrecy of the hunts and the unknown lovecraftian themes. Its hard to piece together what happens in a single playthrough but that does not mean that the story is bad. i hope you can reconsider your view on the lore of the series....

The critique of the Souls Lore is more-so about how weak it feels to learn anything about it 40+ hours AFTER you've completed it and still have it all be superfluous/ irrelevant to what you actually did. You're not really involved in it, you're just a murder-hobo who blows through everything in your first playthrough and kills all their acquaintances in the end for their stuff in the end for your next time loop bc you don't know anything about an area until you're done with it and will never return. Basically having a novels-worth of backstory replace the actual story doesn't work for most people.

I think thats what souls or bloodorne was going for, indifference of the world to the player. Its not about the player or the "hero" more like hes just a skilled hunter or warrior who is exploring the desolate world. Firstly, its different to anything else with the focus not being on the players narrative but the worlds and characters. Secondly i think theres no way to make a hero like story that gives the player significance while also making it nuanced or secret as well. if the player has legendary status, then its inevitable that youd find out which defeats the purpose of making an effort to find out through a soulslike way also that it wouldnt really matter, since the player isnt a character with a personality or story. Also what you said about area lore being revealed only after the first encounter can make for a great replay chance, where going back you piece what you learnt together.

What's wrong with ER boss design?

@@Reez22154 16:06

@@Reez22154 A lot. There are already a bunch of videos going into it but to sum up: overuse of delayed attacks, overly long combo strings, inconsistent follow-ups, blatant input reading and minuscule attack windows.

@@amysteriousviewer3772 Its sort of funny because all of those reasons are why I love the Elden Ring bosses. In real life people won't do the same telegraphed attacks, they will feint a blow and then follow up with a swift cut when you can't react, they will delay their attacks to put you off, they won't stand around to let you hit them and they won't let up on their attacks until you are dead. Of course it is a game, it has crazy magic and dodge rolls and limited parrying and such, and the bosses still give you too much time to attack them, but I want an enemy that can keep me thinking and on my toes, not one who does the same 3 move combo. Elden Ring has some of my favourite bosses for those reasons.

Kinda ironic that its not an accurate representation of what many people and developers think. ER may have the most versatile and varied boss design in Fromsoft catalogue, and the focus on action only shows that they are not one trick ponies satisfying the opinions of a group of people expecting to play exactly the same on every game.

Pretty much why in Elden Ring Lake of Rot (and Swamp of Aeonia to some degree although you could either go around the swamp anyway or traverse with a horse through it without consequences which is bad in a different way) felt nowhere as "scary" as Blighttown; if you're almost dead you can just warp back to the checkpoints if there's no enemies nearby (and there's barely any of them) so the entire dreadful feeling about searching for the nearest bonfire to survive is pretty much gone.

@@ToastieMcMuffin Yeah definitely. I also think having a map indicate exactly where you are also takes some of the fun away, you're not inclined to really think about where you are and remember the routes back to safety.

@@saysolmao to be fair, the map is basically useless for the legacy dungeons and only helps with the giant open world

That's why I actively try not to use it. After my 2nd character (I'm on my 5th by now) I started not using the warp mechanic as much I could. Rather walk/ride my way to whatever objective I have in mind. Exceptions made to the Roundtable hold, and Ranni's church (up in the other Plateau)

The cumbersome mechanics of the series are, in a way, the things that used to make it special. Weapon durability meant you had a chance to bond with the Blacksmiths. Lack of fast travel made the world feel huge and cohesive as if you were just a small piece of a grander puzzle. The intricate placement of bonfires/lamps allowed the levels to feel truly labyrinthian ( a feature mostly gone in Elden Ring).

He got the estus drop wrong, not to mention Elden Ring boss enemy's delayed attacks absolutely rekts veterans, who roll at any change in bosses starting frames

@@jaaxc1036 Dark Souls 3 did already the delayed attacks so you are wrong

@@FatalFatalisFtFts DS3 delayed attacks are not even close to Elden Ring

@@FatalFatalisFtFts While DS3 has delays they didn’t have these ridiculous delays as in ER, nor as many as Elden Ring’s bosses. They literally hold their attacks for four entire seconds ffs. I really disliked DS3, but that’s something that isn’t nearly as bad as in Elden Ring, which says something considering in DS3 it was really bad already.

Finished Elden Ring after 130 hours. Exploration and open world design is engaging. However, everything else is so flawed. Legit might be the most overrated game I’ve ever played. 6/10.

i'd rather have the "roll and punish" bosses most of the time because whenever fromsoft tries to do a gimmick boss you just get shit like micolash, rom, bed of chaos, witches of hemwick, etc. but elden ring didnt even have "roll and punish" bosses as good as any in the previous games so whatever

@@solomon2466 than go play Devil May Cry or Bayonetta

@@solomon2466 That’s only the bad ones. Good ones are like Tower Knight.

@@hellomadet ok i will

Except they want you to stop rolling constantly, that's why they structure attacks that way. You're basically doing it to yourself. Stop that and start thinking, in Matthews words, "like an adventurer"...

@@carlschrappen9712 I agree with you, there are action games that do those type of bosses much better than fromsoft. It's just that fromsoft rarely ever executes these gimmick bosses well. There are a few execptions like the one you mentioned, but the majority of them aren't very good in my opinion. The combat in souls isn't very deep, but it's still fun. So fights that test my knowledge of the games combat are enjoyable to fight for me even though there are games that do it better.

@@carlschrappen9712 I wouldn't really call Sif a gimmick boss. He's more of a lore boss if you ask me. Him limping towards the end of the fight was bloody soul crushing though :( But yeah I think an even balance of both types of fights would be ideal. Just for me personally, when I replay these games the gimmick bosses lose their charm since I already know the trick behind them. But I can understand why they're in the game and why some people like them.

@@carlschrappen9712 I find it funny that people seem to think that the combat in Sekiro has alot of depth when in reality it really doesn't. I found myself playing it the exact same way on all of my subsequent playthroughs and the only reason I even replayed it was to get the other endings. These people really need to play a game that actually has really deep combat like Devil may cry for example. That being said, the combat in Sekiro is pretty solid and is something unique to the traditional souls formula. But yeah as I said, an equal balance of both gimmick and traditional fights would be ideal. I just hope the gimmick fights aren't bed of chaos levels of quality though and are more similar to the likes of the storm king and maiden astrea lol.

@@carlschrappen9712 Why did you delete your comments?

@@carlschrappen9712 Fair enough

Its a real shame since Bloodborne and Sekiro showed that they can do something different, especially with Sekiro being so recent. (Derascine too but don't think that turned many heads). They need to let the Souls series sleep unless they plan on returning to their roots. Hopefully Armored Core gives them a chance to do something new...

@@hdo4ever ngl I agree. I really liked elden ring but at least the game had the open world to make it feel a bit fresh. But another souls game with no substantial changes would be a bit disappointing. Either mix the gameplay again while keeping the same souls skeleton but with a new setting or make a new game entirely

elden ring is already the depressing 'future' of souls games. It's over

@@ignotumperignotius630 mattew fans try not to be overly-cynical challenge (impossible). Also there is a long way(hopefully) until what fromsoft makes will become comparable with the souless western studio garbage that gets pumped out every year despite your personal grievances with the game

@@ignotumperignotius630 I think “the end of souls games” is actually the best case scenario. Let Fromsoft make some new and innovative games.

I'm not here to say anything about your comment, I just really like your Max Payne picture. Underrated quote.

That was clearly lifted from BB but they overlooked one important aspect: that game has a built in counter to those attacks, namely THE GUNS! If an enemy starts going ham then you shoot and punish them. So they decided to bring over a major aspect of BB gameplay without considering how it would fit in DS . Baffling!

Nailed it. BB's dodges were also fast as hell, had almost no recovery time, and cost very little stamina. DS3 basically has dark souls 1 stamina consumption and Demon's Souls rolling, so you aren't equipped to deal with it.

the biggest part of that problem for me were bosses and outriders, as well as things that went way farther than necessary. for instance, I didn't mind Lothric Knights being as tough as they were, that was fine, they added a fine challenge. but then you had Cathedral Knights, better, stronger knights that fear nothing and no one. Then you had Irrythil Knights... That's where things got way out of fucking hand fast... and then you had Pontiff's beasts. that's when the game went from sort of like Bloodborne, to 100% Bloodborne.

@@toxicitzi357 The Ringed Knight with straight sword is another example, but is less painful since there are very few of them. They have a slash combo where a couple of swings occur so fast that you can't dodge one if you dodged the other, unless you were able to roll backwards and get out of range. Edit: But yeah, the GS Cathedral knights and their never ending swings that can still hit you behind them. The Pontiff beasts and their immense damage coupled with speed and poor telegraphing. And the Outriders, who attack so much and so fast that you sometimes have no stamina to attack with despite efficient rolling. They're not unbeatable or very hard, heck, if you get a large weapon you can trivialize them by preventing them from attacking. They're just cheap, especially with the increasing amount of enemies that magicaly get out of any and all recovery frames when you hit them, making them recover and attack faster WHEN you hit them. Case in point: try attacking the grave wardens with something fast, like a dagger. They will sometimes perform a swing that is so fast that it will hit you between your attacks despite the warden having to recover briefly. If you're unlucky, they'll do this several times inside your combo, costing you a large portion of your health through something you couldn't prevent (except by dodging and spamming magic).

you forgot to mention that half of the NPCs are protected by a no-weapons allowed zone so players don't "accidentally" kill them great to see that fromsoft has no faith in players taking normal human like decisions

I agree with most of what you said but few. -Early respec is kinda good in game that has so much stuff to try out, starting from begining is alot slower this time around -No bosses are designed to be fought only on horses, but horse does make alot of fights stupidly easy -You can be damaged on flour only when getting kicked of horse -Crafting is alright, its like shoping but on fly, but collecting stuff is bad since you just spam the button, it could of had been automatic. My big complaint is that bosses play most unfairly, heavy weapon build is torture since they recover from attacks in instant. They play with different rules and it shows, infite stamina and mana, so fight are RNG, you have to get lucky for them to throw easy moves. Co-op is shit, just a copy pase from ds which doesnt fit elden ring. Npc questlines are just wikipedia searches for basicaly 90% people and no improvements were made in that regard. And bosses are reused for fear of missing them out.

I would argue that the most people who don't think its a masterpiece are people who never played souls games. Most people complaining are the ones who are not used to fromsoft games.

Hit the nail on the head with the last point. The state of AAA games as a whole nowadays is just... ugh

You forgot to add that slower weapons effectively handicap you (like greatswords) and only makes the dichotomy between Dexterity and Strength based weapons worse. And I’m one of the people who likes Dex weapons, by the way.

Matthew is right.

At least in Sekiro it is possible to combo ninja tools, into combat arts, plus there are all the new defensive options you need to be mindful of.

now that I've played sekiro I agree with this video even more, it's funny

@Donald Anderson He seems kinda... Cynical to me.

Sekiro combat is all about pressing the block button at the right time, in quick succession.

I could see him liking Sekiro for what it is. It’s a very competent action game, and it actually has mechanics that work better with its action system than DS3 or Bloodborne did. Its combat is definitely more complex, though still nothing approaching Devil May Cry, for example. I think that I don’t like Sekiro just because it’s not my thing, and DS is. I like RPG mechanics and progression. Sekiro doesn’t REALLY have these. Don’t forget, Matthew has beaten Devil May Cry on the hardest difficulty while taking no damage. He definitely likes twitch action games. I can’t be sure what he would think, but whether he agrees with me or not, I can be sure he’d have some good insight.

OMG all you people do is bitching and complain! What do you want? For Honor mechanics implemented in FS games? Why? They found the formula, and people love it, these games are always going to be about "timing" and fair challenge. Elden Ring is a great game about journey and exploration of unknown. You are the one who is missing out. I respect him because he is not following trends of other game developers. I blame people like you for ruined series like Assassin's Creed. Why does a boss fight has to be a puzzle game? Since when action RPG games became puzzle platform games? If Meadzaki wants his games to be roll simulator, he fucking has right to do so! Understand one simple fact There will be never a perfect game A perfect game of the genre? Yes! ER is a perfect example of that.

They are making a good games that sets the limits of genre. Because it won't make much sense to add football in Elder Ring It would be cool However totally unnecessary!

Sekiro was experimental! And turn out to be awesome. Perfect game is all the great games ever created put together in one single game, which is impossible because it take centuries to make that game! You are asking FS to expand the limits they set for themselves, why would they need to be doing that? Life is not perfect Can you be perfect? No Can you be perfect human being? Yes, absolutely See what I did there? I putted a limit Because in that certain pool area of perfection You can be the best of the best. First step is enjoy great games to be inspired by them to make your own Perfect Game.

@@TheNether333 i want more interesting fights and mechanics. More fights like Rykard in Elden Ring and less like Margit. For how giant the world in elden ring is, the amount of things you do with it is very limited. All bosses of a certain weapon type do the same shit and it's just lame.

They brought Ashen Estus back though. 10/10 Matthew approved!

I think the very first encounter with the dragon on the lake is the perfect use case of the horseback combat. The Dragon gets to do dragon things like fly around and you get to follow/avoid him at a similar pace thanks to Torrent. Unfortunately From Soft somehow thought it was a good idea to not let you use Torrent in a fight with Elden Beast, a creature that is big, moves around a lot and has huge AOEs.

And maybe I exaggerated about there being no surprises. Those crazy chariot dungeons despite being unfair and rage inducing were fun in the end, just because they were different, a new challenge more similar to a puzzle/plataforming section that was a nice break from boss-with-a fifteen-seconds-long-attack-chain-and-input-reading #27, which is regrettable since those dungeons end on another boring bossfight with a mediocre reward

@@bobsnob9246 You're right about the lack of surprises, personally the worst disappointment I had with Elden Ring was how completely static and boring the open world is. It was a golden opportunity for FromSoft to create interesting traversal challenges and instead they just copypasted the usual poison swamps (which can be completely trivialized by using the horse) and nothing else. Even Dragon's Dogma has more interesting area gimmicks like Windworm Valley. In fact ER does absolutely nothing interesting or creative neither as an open world game nor as a Souls game.

At the 50 hour mark you will get bord mostly because the game just decides to throw boss after boss after anoying enemy back to back gets stale fast.

@@sagejay9816 yeah I thought the world was the best since ds1 but once you run out of stuff to explore its apparent the mechanics of the series haven't gotten any better. The final stretch of bosses are particularly cheap.

@@AldricJFL When I got to the "Super Saiyan 4!" poison swamp I just sighed really hard and the weight of my disappointment with from's lack of restraint (and it seems originality at this point) collapsed on me like a structurally compromised brick house.

Nah, I remember hearing him laughing his ass off, and I never tried to kill him, he just didn't give me a chance. I knew I wasn't chasing a prey, it was all pure show.

I think i agree. The Remembrance Fights are mostly cool, but a lot of the catacombs and stuff are lame and they start to reuse bosses fairly early. Ranni's quest was really accessible even for someone not looking stuff up and has a really satisfying ending and implications for the finale. Even stuff like gideon having more spells if you did the optional legacy dungeons is neat, but while numbers are up, boss fight uniqueness are down. And a lot of these little side dungeons, while optional, contain important upgrade items or bell bearings to level your stuff up so you can deal with the boss rush difficulty spike at the end (I like these bosses mostly, even if half of them are only roll skillchecks. I had a lot of fun with it, and it seems like the different magic color builds feel pretty fresh (swapped from dex stuff to int/str once finishing ranni's line for the sword),and I spent ages in Limgrave, Peninsula, and Liurnia just hanging out, but everything past that is a little less charming.

What on earth are you talking about in the last paragraph? There's no such area.

Imo what really ruins them for me is the lack of innovation, it's practically just Roll Souls again

In elden ring they give you more openings to be more offensive

ru-vid.com/video/%D0%B2%D0%B8%D0%B4%D0%B5%D0%BE-fo4dXJmd1cQ.html

@@kizuma4269 I like how half of that video, which has "advanced" in the title, is just explaining the same stuff that's told to the player during the tutorial (dodge, parry, guard counters) and the other half is just obvious crap (punish attacks with long recovery animations, position yourself properly). I don't think Souls fans know what "advanced" means

@@SealedReality "Advanced" in the title?

I agree.

well said

Also jumping over poison water still builds poison... because of course it does.

Another thing to add, input buffering is even worse now than ever in Elden Ring, to the point that mistiming a single roll means your character will roll the moment they are freed from hitstun to potentially eat another hit to the face... 😑 Edit: After doing an SL1 run of Dark Souls 3, I have to concede I was partially wrong about the input buffering in Elden Ring being "worse now than ever". Since it turns out Dark Souls 3 also has the same issue of input buffering being overzealous, which was the largest source of my deaths... So while I still maintain that Elden Ring has horrendous input buffering, it was almost certainly a design flaw carried over from DS3.

You're telling me that designing a trillion bosses where you just do the exact same thing over and over isn't objectively the peak design of the greatest game series ever created? 😮

Yup, the difficulty was intended as a way to pull you into the world, but it was never looking for the "hardest game of all time" category. Not by a long shot. Still, they eventually gave into their own marketing and actively tried to make something difficult, rather than something immersive. Good for them that it is succesful, but I will never again play a from game I don't think. Not as a statement, I just dislike their current design.

It’s not bland and repetitive you just need to get good. /s