I'm really glad you emphasized the experiential aspect of playing the game. The lore community can get lost in the details and specifics, it felt like a breath of fresh air to hear someone talk about what it *feels like* to explore for the sake of curiosity rather than becoming RU-vidr, The All Knowing. Thank you for the wonderful video!
I don’t mind the attacks that are designed to punish early rolls, but they have to make sense visually, and they don’t always do. For example: At the end of one of Consort Radahn’s combos, he’ll wind up for a downward slash with both of his swords. The initial wind up animation starts, he’ll literally slow down his momentum, and then the attack snaps out. It’s so unnatural looking that no one can really be faulted for rolling early because he’s already quickly building momentum for the attack. But then he slows down mid animation. A baseball player can’t slow down their momentum half way while swinging a bat.
@@TheKeyboardBeatz Seriously?? MIND. BLOWN. But seriously, Radahn, Mohg, and a bunch of other enemies with bigger weapons all have a sense of momentum when they swing at you. And MOST of the time, it makes sense visually. The best example would probably be Mohg. Some of his attacks are designed to roll catch, and they still make sense visually. But Radahn halting his momentum mid swing and then snapping out the attack last month just looks ridiculous.
It's interesting that our experiences with getting to hear St.Trina were so different. Your reaction was "Oh I'm in a video game I guess" While mine was "Oh wait, that's right! The superpower we have in these games is that we're canonically immortal!" It dragged me way more into the setting and immersed me way more for what was to come, which made Enir Ilim hit me in the gut on a visceral level
it also shows that we have to earn the right to hear trina's voice, by putting our trust in her. also in japanese the word for the number 4 is "shi" which also means death, and you have to be killed by trina 4 times to hear her voice.
I really disagree about the solution to St. Trina’s quest being unimmersive or not rewarding paying attention. The game constantly reinforces the idea that St. Trina’s elixir is addictive. It’s an opiate, equated with both the release from suffering but also poison. The devotee of St. Trina longs for her eternal sleep, so we have to return to be poisoned by her again and again.
My favorite boss on my no fragment upgrades build. Really satisfying to learn and get through. Rellana, Divine Beast, Midra and Messmer were also surprisingly fun without upgrades but all the others either have one really annoying move and/or too much health if you aren't eating your daily dose of upgrades.
Yeah, the sunflower was one of my favorite bosses in the dlc, especially since it wasn't an encounter built around endless combos and overpowered gimmick attacks.
I thought this was FromSoftware's best cast of characters other than Sekiro. Leda is insane but passionate and extremely strong willed. Hornsent is straightforward and as righteous as he is vicious. Moore is adorable and hides a very revealing secret under his armor. Thollier is a sweet boy with a noble cause who finds his inner strength at your side despite his hardship. Freja is level headed and reasonable despite her role as a fierce warrior. Dane is silent, loyal and badass. Ansbach has a terrifying reputation, seeks to understand context for his circumstances, and in his age and wisdom joins you in a noble confrontation. Ymir and Jolan are a fun pair who have some lore bombshells. Grandem hints at Marika's ascension. Florissax is kinda creepy in her calm and steadfast devotion who also drops a lore bombshell. Igon of course, CURSE YOU BAYLE, has the best acting in the game. Every single one of the Remembrance bosses have some environmental storytelling and some less than obvious hints about their roles built into the context of where they are and who they represent. I really enjoyed the characters you kill or hear about through item description. Anna, Queelign, Meera, Huw, Hilde, Yosh, Taylew, Ornis, Salza, Wego, Kood, Raksasha, Red Bear, Dancer, Andreas all have fun little anecdotes that expand the setting and narrative of the Shadow Realm.
Its strange to say Artorias is a more central character to DS1 than Miquella is to ER. Artorias' quest is almost entirely tangential to the main plot, while Miquella is pursuing essentially the same goal as the player. He is a rival to us, as another contender to rule the world. This is made quite explicit by Leda: "The Erdtree was leading you all along. So that you might ascend to lordship. Why come to these lands to begin with? I suppose it must be what his Eminence, or perhaps the Erdtree, desired all along? The clashing of the favored lords, such that one would prevail?" I think the plot of the DLC does a lot to reinforce the themes of the main game. The "thesis statement" of the game is that civilization is built on a hefty dose of violence - "a crown is warranted with strength". Miquella choosing Radahn the #1 war fan as his consort seems to contradict his own aims of creating a compassionate age, but thats the point, Miquella's charm isn't enough to force the world to his will, he also needs a big stick. The player is guided by grace to become more powerful, that is the uniting goal of every seemingly random diversion, including the DLC. Each and every challenge we overcome makes us stronger, and thus a better candidate for successful Lordship. Its a great way of tying the gameplay loop in with the narrative imo.
Although the endings for the Shadow Realm NPCs are all anti-climatic, I think the final brawl between Leda and the player is a novel idea, and I personally felt pretty moved by it, but maybe that was mostly from the superb music and voice acting, that encounter has some of the best line delivery in the DLC, along with Igon
Fair! I love the idea, just didn't quite work for me. Writing about ER has made me realize that it is really different from the Souls games, although the tone is similar at times the Leda fight feels truly like high fantasy to me, versus an encounter like the Lautrec invasion. I don't know where they find the voice actors for these games, they are consistently one of the best parts.
@@JimmyMcG33/videos Given the consistently high quality I imagine they're still using Frognation. Just checked and yeah they are. Everything except Sekiro it seems.
I don’t think the issue with modern souls games is ramping up difficulty, it’s spectacle creep. People really loved the visceral nature and speed of Bloodborne that it became the standard for Dark Souls 3 and Elden Ring to make bosses look cool as possible, substituting the more calmer and dungeon crawling atmosphere of Demon’s Souls, Dark Souls, and Dark Souls 2.
I feel for fans of the slower paced games, but I also vastly prefer the push towards all out anime. Bloodborne is where I started and even Dark Souls 3 doesn't feel as good. Sekiro and Elden Ring lean into the spectacle and throw in a lot of color. Most importantly they feel very different from Bloodborne, but there's enough design/thematic overlap to connect them in ethos/mythos. I guess I just don't like the Souls titles as much as I like the spin offs they inspired.
I don't necessarily think spectacle implies overwhelming difficulty the way some of Elden Ring's fights go. In Bloodborne you have stuff like Father Gascoigne, Rom or Moon Presence, all of which are big spectacle fights and none of which are Elden Ring hard, even for someone like me who's more confident with Elden Ring's combat than Bloodborne's. Ultimately difficulty largely comes down to four things: boss health, attack damage, animations and frame data. Spectacle only really forces you to make difficult-to-read animations (and even then, some control is maintained), but you can still make those attacks either easy to dodge by giving them generous frame data (small or short-lasting hitboxes that are easier to dodge) or less punishing to get hit by by reducing their damage. Bloodborne does this a lot - a lot of big scary attacks let you sort of just phase through them with an OK-timed dodge or don't hit nearly as hard as you'd think. I'm reminded of Fume Knight in Dark Souls 2, whose big fire attacks you can dodge through despite visually just being in the fire. Elden Ring goes out of its way to not be generous in these ways. The big spectacle attacks don't have hitboxes that favor the player, and they hit really hard. That's why Malenia's Waterfowl Dance is so maddening - you need to be nearly frame-perfect to dodge it, and it's pretty likely to one-shot you when considering hitstun. Compare this to something like Sword-Saint Isshin, who had plenty of really hard to dodge flashy attacks but they weren't one-shots and he would often let you recover. They go out of their way to make the bosses "mean", too, with stuff like programming them to try to aggressively hit you out of Estus Flask drinks (very rare in previous games), unintuitive intended dodge directions, fake-out attack timings (where the boss will lift their weapon, stop to wait exactly as long as a dodge roll that would start at the intuitive timing takes, then hit), the ability to turn on a dime (which if anything is anti-cinematic, it looks silly and gamey) and incredibly harsh punishes for usually safe strategies (like how every dragon's strongest-hitting attack is now breathing fire under their belly). It's a lot more than just a tendency for visual spectacle, there's clearly intentional design here to make the bosses more challenging and punishing, to what I feel is an unfun extent.
JIMMY!!!! RELEASE THE PAY TO WIN 3 VIDEO AND MY LIFE IS YOURS!!! Fr tho super excited to watch this, every time you post a new video it's like Christmas. I hope you're having a great day!
@@JimmyMcG33 I wish I could tell you how much understanding the machine zone actually influences hackers. I bought addiction by design after pt 2 appreciate your work so much
The biggest difference between the lore of Dark Souls and Elden Ring, is that ER has a written history complete with important moments created by character motivations that are crucial to make it compelling. Meanwhile DS lore is much simpler in comparison, and was intentionally written to be uncovered through these fragments; connecting the dots allows us to easily fill in the gaps in a satisfying way, but still allows some room for theories. I heavily doubt GRRM knew that this would be their approach to lore, so when they cut it up into fragments and left out key details, for me it results in feeling unfinished instead of provoking mystery. There are clearly obvious answers and links between events that just don’t exist in the game, making it feel like concepts are just piled on without reason or thought. Radagon being Marika for example just becomes confounding with the extra detail that Radagon at one point wasn’t her, which begs the questions why and how, which just aren’t possible to satisfyingly answer with what the game gives us, sure you can make an interesting theory, but that theory will have no more credence than ‘because it was funny’. That’s just my opinion though.
Dark Souls backstory was closer to myth or fairytale than actual history. Elden Ring’s backstory and lore is the other way around and it almost doesn’t work.
@@1925683 well said. I think what exaggerates that is GRRM likely not envisioning some of his concepts as pure fantasy ones, such as the two fingers not actually being two fingers. It’s hard asf to tie realistic history with wild fantasy well, which is why there’s not too much fantasy at all in Game of Thrones
This is a great take, and I think George RR Martin's involvement also set up a false expectation for the audience. i remember when the game was being hyped up as removing itself from the DS formula and involving a famous story writer, so I thought that meant "We're delivering a rpg with a cohesive story and real stakes that drive you to finish it for once" and it ended up being just another DS game, but somehow even more uninteresting (there was TOO MANY DETAILS to be broken up and scattered, so none of them were very compelling). I find it amazing that the DLC actually followed through with that initial expectation and seemed to do everything the base game should have done IMO, and i'm surprised it was reviewed so poorly compared to the base game.
@@GalactoseGalaxy personally I think the dlc only lived up to those expectations in a couple of areas (Miquella, and Marika to an extent), but a lot of the characters felt hollow just because of how much was clearly cut and not embellished from the lore. Gaius feels like such a hollow and pointless character in general, and it’s annoying that one of his item descriptions mentions that he trained with Radahn and Gaia. Like who is Gaia? It’s not even flavour text it’s just not interesting and only serves to make it feel unfinished. Actually thinking about it now maybe Gaia is the albenauric we fight in the area after Gaius, but still it’s not compelling because they essentially aren’t characters, just names on figures.
Exactly! In dark souls it was fairly straightforward to understand the main plot and what it was communicating thematically, with Elden Ring it just causes frustration because I can’t tell what the main story is even about. The DLC was marginally better but it also has a very major plot hole: how does Miquella abandon his flesh, when his corpse is in Mohgwyn palace? Also, if Empyreans can just abandon their flesh, what was the point of Ranni’s ritual with the black knives? The base game has many such gaps in the story, where every “reveal” feels pointless because it doesn’t actually tell you much at all, since it contradicts something earlier in the story and now you are stuck trying to make sense of it with headcanon.
I'm mostly through the video and it has a lot of interesting insights, especially for me as someone who never really enjoyed the moment to moment gameplay of the Souls games. I do, however, have a counterpoint in regards to what you said about player expression: Difficulty and imbalance between playstyles can, beyond a certain degree, very directly influence and restrict player expression. It's hard to imprint what you like onto your playthrough when the game simply determines you as not good enough to play that way due to its mechanics, when in other games the equivalent of this personal taste it may even be the easiest way to play. This can lead to a player finding joy in something different, or quite often simply detaches one from identifying with their player characters as they intially hoped, severing the connection between player and medium that player expression exists to create through difficulty one may not be able to overcome.
I think I see what you mean. When I played the base game I totally felt like my preferred style wasn't viable (greatswords were horrible when the game released, now they are top-tier) and if I was new to the series I may have dropped the game. With that said imo Elden Ring is the closest From has come to making all playstyles viable for everyone (although you will be forced into certain tools like Mimic Tear if you go for something hard), whereas I think the Souls games really were built with a swordsman archetype in mind, and deviating from that would make you wildly over- or under-powered. I will always go to bat for that kind of design--obviously I love God Hand and it incentivizes a very specific style of play--but I think the more open ended approach generally works in Elden Ring.
@@JimmyMcG33 I think incentivizing gameplay has a place for sure, especially in online PvP games, and wanted to bring up this point because I feel it to be a very important difference in how RPG/sandbox player expression is different to tactics- or puzzle-focused games where options are supposed to be used as a toolbox and reward identifying the right approach. There's probably something to be said about a balance to be struck but some games are also supposed to be sandboxes while others are puzzles and tests to be solved. I wish I enjoyed Elden Ring more to have some proper idea to form thoughts about its approach in this dichotomy I just made up (please someone stop me I made so many it's like an addiction) but I'm unfortunately just not a huge fan of memory-focused challenges and the nature of Souls games controls.
While I'm not one to use bot sponges to tank bosses on my first run, it does make me happy that Elden Ring has so many tools that let more people to experience these games. It ends up with people having more tools to diagetically turn difficulty down in specific ways that they prefer. After all, we are all good at different things and not just binarily good/bad at specific games as a whole. Anecdotally, some of my friends struggled with bosses I breezed through and crushed bosses that I would call challenging.
I disagree with a lot of your opinions, but I will say that I agree that Elden Ring has rung about as much as it can from its particular gameplay direction. If they want to make new soulslikes, then I think they should explore new directions, or revisit old ones. Honestly, I hope they take a break from soulsikes altogether, ac6 and sekiro were incredible and I'd love to see what else they can come up with. I say this as someone who could consider ER their favourite game ever. I'm satisfied - not exhausted, and I'm hungry for something new. I'm exited to see where Fromsoft goes next.
I was gonna write a comment disagreeing, I like the bosses, but I can’t help but respect your opinion on this. It’s interesting and enlightening to hear from someone who gets such a different sense of enjoyment out of these games than I do and the perspective you share on this series has given me a lot to think about.
As someone who really loved DS1 and has been chasing that high in these games ever since I relate a lot to this video. Maybe one day they'll come back.
I think some other developer will make something memorable instead, this horse might be dead. I don't know what you loved in DS1, but if you haven't already play Outer Wilds. Just avoid any spoilers
Thanks for putting into words what I like about the soul lineage (the exploration and the lived world), which seemed to get a bit lost in the modern iterations. Especially boss design being laser focused on difficulty and certain type of two phase power scaling making it a bit too homogeneous. Hopefully as you said from has to change something and I cant wait to see what their next fantasy installment will being about
You know I can't remember how generous Elden Ring was in letting me upgrade many multiples of weapon/types in order to really broaden out my playstyle and approaches to problems - I _t h in k_ it was better than some previous entries but . . . Just think about how much less of a hassle this is in a game like AC6
Finally a review of this DLC and game overall where someone maturely and frankly talks about things they like a lot and dislike a lot. Feels like half the time people online treat from software like politics, like you have to hard commit to either promoting it as the greatest thing ever with no major issues, or just bashing it and giving a bad review, as if theres no middle ground
The world design in SotE really is fantastic. I know that Elden Ring's map gets a lot of praise for its lack of handholding and amount of content, but imo the actual DESIGN of the topography itself is very standard; The map is just this flat, open zone that provides no navigational challenge and instead just acts as a way to disperse the actual content without load screen. What I mean is that in Elden Ring, I never asked myself once "how do I get there?" but instead would say "I want to go there" and just held the left analog stick forward for 30 seconds until I did. But SotE's map twists and winds in on itself with so many pathways and so many "how do I get there?" moments that it makes navigation actually interesting gameplay on its own right. It gives me more faith in From's future games, which I imagine will be open world at least to some degree given the monstrous sales of Elden Ring
Loved hearing your impressions of the dlc and souls games, your input is refreshing and inspiring as usual. Hope you enjoy your time until we hear from you next!
I think the only recent soulslike thats reignited my enjoyment of the combat is Lies of P, both because of the new mechanics it brings to the table but also the efforts taken by the devs to actually make attacks readable while still having flashy, cinematic encounters. Your critiques of ER make me wonder if you've played that game, because although it regrettably ditches the interconnected world it's probably the best shot at the type of linear moment-to-moment action game that DS3 was
You have such a beautiful way of articulating your thoughts and ideas! I have some very minor disagreements with some of your takes but overall I'm all about much of what you expressed here. Keep up the fantastic work!
I was like "Wait I know this guy from somewhere" and it's from the Pay to Win videos you made that I liked a ton. Man, what a sudden come back, interesting to hear your thoughts out on Shadow of the Erdtree!
I always come back to your older videos from time to time, I just finished watching through all the favorites and it’s such a nice surprise to see you uploading again. Welcome back king!!
I had the same eye-roll moments when I encountered every annoying extended attack chain as you seem to have had, but I've realized that I don't care enough about the world, story, or characters to want to power through those annoyances. I didn't feel happy or triumphant when I beat Malenia or Mohg; I just felt relieved that I don't have to keep looking at their attacks while not being able to do anything until it's my turn. I don't like summoning (in ANY souls game) because of how badly it fucks up the boss' AI. It never feels like I overcame an obstacle.
If Elden Ring was my introduction to the "series" I 100% would have dropped it or skipped all the optional stuff. Genuinely didn't care about the story at all until the DLC. It feels like they tried to fix summoning, I think their aggro takes proximity into account more now and they re-target hosts every once in a while, but it does still turn fights into a tossup where they are incredibly easy or impossible due to unpredictable attacks.
@@JimmyMcG33 often you can jump attack over or position around the combos, a lot of strength weapons even have moderate blocking power without using ashes.
@@squeezy8414 You're right. By the time I got to him, I was just tired of the game and wasn't in the mood to take his bs. I even beat him in like five or six tries lol.
I feel so vindicated by most of your points here lol, both criticisms and praise. I found a good portion of the bosses pretty tedious and just created a really broken build to not have to engage too hard (you're right about Scadutree Avatar though, awesome boss that feels more experiential like some of the older fromsoft bosses). I think Nioh kinda ruined what appeal souls combat had for me, but that's not too bad, because I still love the exploration. Also I lost it when you put in the God Hand camera example because thats literally the thing I bring up every time when talking about souls game combat issues, devs need to get comfortable with the idea of just culling everything between the player and camera imo, no more disorienting boss fights. On level design stuff I'm very happy you mentioned how good shadow keep is because I think it's just a staggeringly good piece of level design. Great video as usual 👍
@@JimmyMcG33 I love it so much, been playing a lot of the other Team Ninja games as well and their old stuff is great, NG Black was fun and NG2 is some of the most polished combat I've ever experienced. definitely recommend those if you've never played
Your point about companionship and friendship in NPCs rings very close to home. My favorite thing about AC6 was Rusty and how they build him up in an amicable/rival relationship to the player. If only they leaned into him more for the true end
It's like Miyazaki said. He said he wants to make something new. But we wanted a piece of the same. It's like being lured by Miquella The Kind, but the betrayal is not about the creator or lure, it's about the betrayal we do to ourselves when we just follow and don't listen to ourselves, forget what we actually follow and become blind to the lure.
As someone who has NEVER understood the appeal of the souls games' worldbuilding and lore whenever I end up watching a video on the subject I can't help but feeling like an alien trying to understand human sign language.
You made a great case for the DLC! But I'm not sure if I'll get into it. Elden Ring felt thin, sort of stretched, like butter scraped over too much bread.
Shadow of the Erdtree is the other side of the expectrum Imo, for the good and the bad. It compromises a lot that didn't happen on Elden Ring base Game, like having zones that are mostly empty and doesn't have more than one or two porpuses to explore. This could make that for instance, one regarding Dragons, doesn't have more porpuse that being a build Up for one of the Boss fights , which by the memes you can imagine which is. This was exchanged with more worthy content and much much less copy and paste. Minor Dungeons are more scarce but they are far more original and Creative. Main bosses except one are not repeated on the same piece of content. Repeated Boss fights often if not always has things to spice them Up, like new moves. I personally prefer the take of SotE, as make more content noteworthy.
it's more dense than the base game, the game wasn't expecting players to find everything on one playthrough so it's better to just not worry about missing out on things.
Your videos are so consistently interesting and well paced, love hearing your thoughts on, well anything you decide to talk about. Looking forward to the pay to win series or whatever else you have planned!
I was sorely disappointed by the base game. I thought that with all that time and polish they would have made it full of experiences for you to have, what else could have the priority? So I notice straight away that loot in the open world isn't worth picking up and thats a good thing. Now i don't have to mash my face against every wall and can just go on an adventure. I can't get into the Academy. Just can't solve the puzzle. Try from the underground, matching the maps, try exploting the perimeter for an entrance, try talking to sorcerer npcs for a hint but nothing. For many hours. Clearly I'm not smart enought. All my friends made it and I'm struggling so much that I'm not even sure what the puzzle is, let alone solve it. Do i resolve to look it up onlinr and you pick up the key from a corpse in the swamp and that is the puzzle. Mashing my face against walls for random shinies. I stopped respecting the game from then on, went on for a few more hours out of fomo and couldn't bring myself to finish it. All of the magic gone.
Fromsoft greatest blunder/genius-stroke with ER is failing to properly explain to the players what is expected of them in combat. They had the boldness to make an entire game to punish you for playing the previous games and picking up certain habits and then unintuitively try to shove up your face new mechanics that are clearly unpolished (telegraph of jumpable attacks, crouching, stance-breaking mechanics, guard-counters). Pretty baller move if you ask me. Issues begin with the sheer number of tools that don't mesh with one another that will either teach you the wrong lesson, or allow you to bypass the learning curve until a Boss suddenly gives you a hard-stop. Should you learn the basics, or should you dig deeper into the tools until you can completey clown the Boss? (Example: All DLC bosses will dive-bomb you on entrance, meaning you can't use Summons at the very begginning. Example 2: greatshields with high stability + ailments + mimic tear). And issues end with the new obscure mechanics, that nobody would know about unless they're cronically online with a wiki while playing the game. Did you know that you can use small darts/daggers to reset a Boss' stance recovery timer? What's a stance? Oh when you do an unspecified number of attacks to a boss until he becomes vulnerable for a riposte. But why sometimes 3 charged r2 and sometimes 4? Because you didn't hit him with anything for 5 seconds, so the invisible gauge restored. But remember, jumping r2 do not do the same damage as a simple r1, and certain weapons deal different amounts of stagger, and some ash-of-war escale differently with certain type of weapons. Simple, right? The game sits between letting the most amount of players beat it whatever means neccessary (miyazaki approved), and being a fighting game (made for sweaty gamers). Honestly? Just beat the game and enjoy the experience, even if you summon "let me solo her" to kill malenia, there are more important things to do with life than balding over the "correct way to play a Souls game".
That is a wild thing to think about. Souls games come out with a startling regularity but they offer more than the standard direct sequel. Most series hit the reboot button after 3-4 cracks of the whip. From have taken this lineage in more drastic directions. Even the Dark Souls trilogy feel different enough as the time, personnel and projects between them inform where to take them next.
Great review. I think you make a great point on why this is different to the base game - it's more about just exploring and finding your way through. I felt lost and out of control, not a linear plan of 'go here, then there' like I had in the base. I was also far less concerned with gear aquisition and just getting through efficiently. I ended up sticking with my blasphemous sword faith tank build I had spent about 75 hours with in the base game and just optimising with heavier armour, switching the seal and a couple of talismans. I liked I could create lots of new builds but I felt so invested in my character being a certain way. Re-speccing would have meant losing that internal consistency you talk about.
I really liked elden Ring and Dlc. But after playing through them, I longed to return to the more limited world of Dark Souls 1 and 3. And hey, I still really like Dark Souls 2 and its atmosphere, even though many people hate the game. All this though, after a great Elde ring. It's hard to explain why I like the early darks Souls so much. Maybe they are more intimate for me, with their boundaries and moods.
You contrast summoning phantoms with the frustrations of tackling the bosses attacks solo, but personally I find it far more frustrating to deal with them when the boss has multiple aggro targets. Not only is there a lot more chasing involved (assuming you're primarily using a melee build) since the bosses have a tendency to float around and jump, but the rate at which they can switch aggro allows them to frequently do it mid combo, creating these extremely erratic movements which I find far less reliable to deal with than if I was the only target to their floating inflatable tube man attack patterns. I don't doubt this is how Fromsoft probably intended you to play the DLC given the presence of multiple quests tied to summoning, but if they did, games like monster hunter have tackled the concept of bosses dealing with multiple targets far more cleanly than ER did, and I wish that Fromsoft was more open to copying others homework if they are to continue down this path of making bosses harder and harder, because as it stands ER feels like a game chained by its mechanical roots.
I want them to get rid of I-frame rolling, keep rolling if you want but make it so we can’t roll through attacks without taking damage and slow down the enemies to take advantage of that. I think the combat has depth right now, it’s just hidden behind the roll button. So many attacks can be strafed, jumped, parried etc but most folks don’t know this cause the combat is too fast and there’s no time to even consider what you’re looking at without hours of trial and error.
@@yxngthugger1561 yeah he’s very easy to react to and more fun to fight first time than many other bosses. Even his delays have cues for when to dodge, same with Margit but then Margit has some super fast combos that are really hard to dodge unless you’ve seen them a bunch of times. IDK I love the game, I really do but I feel like Elden Ring more than most games takes time to really enjoy the combat. Still the best game to come out this year though and it’s just an expansion.
Thoughts well spoken. I'm glad to have so much to gain from listening to the take of someone who's perspective in many ways opposes mine (a Lore enthusiastic Boss Fight enjoyer). I would love to see Elden Ring's successor focus more on making AI companions both impactful and smoothly implemented in combat. When it works, it really works but when it doesn't it breaks the illusion. I think that has to be the path forward if they want to keep making bosses that are too much to handle by yourself.
The thing with Gaius is that the boss fight is made to be fought with Torrent in a manner never done before. You can do consistent run-bys to him and hit him and retreat, but most of his attacks are actually dodged by double jumping TOWARDS him and getting to his back then tailing his rear-end before he finishes his chain of attacks. I really liked him, because it was more of a Joust than an actual bossfight, most people that suffer with him have tried to fight him on foot, or if using Torrent, they don't realize the convoluted way to dodge the attacks.
Love getting a glimpse into your thoughts on SotE and the souls series as a whole. I fully agree that these games are at their best when they are about the weird creatures and the exploration of the world, not so much when the action is the focus. Its a shame that for the most part fromsoft has given up on that side of things, but I can truly feel the sentiment being revived by solodevs and other smaller teams. Hopefully 5 years from now we'll be getting smaller games with these sensibilities much in the same way signalis/crow country etc are bringing back the og SH vibes.
You disagree that it’s empty, but I present the two fingerprint areas, the “village” (4 structures with only 2 having doors), the abyssal woods and Bayle’s mountain. Those five areas make up more than a third of the map. I’m not sure what’s to disagree with there. Collecting items to get stronger is extremely artificial because, unlike in the base game where you got better and leveled up, now you’re reliant on items that have more to do with your patience and the necessity to find those items. Which are EXACTLY the amount needed to fully improve. Unlike the base game which gave you more seeds and tears to heal yourself. Why not have the items drop off bosses? Why are they just laying on the ground in “places”. You don’t know how many you might need to improve, how many there are in the area you can even reach. Imagine you go to Yosemite and while visiting they said you needed to pick up 50 pieces of trash to leave, would that be “fun exploring”? I searched where I did in the base game because I wanted to and that never meant if I didn’t happen to spin my camera properly I came out disappointed.
Empty spaces aren't inherently bad. I especially liked the finger ruins and Bayle's mountain. You're not telling me that the lead up to Bayle is bad, that's the entire reason why it's there. To serve as something that leads up to Bayle. I really did enjoy that. Finger ruins while vastly empty have that mood to them, same with Cerulean Coast and Charo's hidden grave. On your first playthrough you'll love the visuals and on the subsequent you can just skip them if you don't want anything from them because they're optional anyways The Scadu fragments are a great fit for Elden Ring because it's not a game where you get stronger by fighting bosses but by exploring. The Scadu fragments are that idea personified.It's also not like you need them all to finish the DLC, they actually have dimished returns after like 14th fragment and that's not hard to get if you stick to the most obvious path through the DLC. Also, it's not like you can't level up in the DLC, you get plenty of runes. You may reach the softcaps on your main stats, but there are other stats you can benefit from. Faith for example has a lot of buffs. Tools are there to be used and if you don't want to use them there is more than enough challenge there for you. If you don't want the challenge or engage with the mechanics, why bother to play these games? 😭
@@shalyn1766 I never said that, and I never said they add up to nothing, but to have SOO little in them was the issue. I’m not saying my opinion is definitive, but one of my biggest issues was size. Bigger is not always better. The verticality was fantastic, but the fact that you had to go through a VERY specific path to get to these places isn’t great either. How is it a “great fit” when the base game didn’t even use it. Again, if you like it, you like it, but if you can’t see how it’s artificial I can’t explain it any more than I have. Leveling up at that point is pretty useless. If you’re at 60 in any of first three, vigor, mind or endurance, the stats mean nothing without those fragments. Criticism isn’t admission of hatred, I just think they could’ve handled it better. My question is why did they change it just for this DLC? Weren’t we running into the same issue in all the previous games? We had the “easy button” and suddenly they inflated the difficulty because… why? Personally I think they knew they had been spread too thin and the DLC was not all that enormous for 2 plus years of work. The base game was in development for 4-5 years and this was half of that? I love the game, and I still really enjoyed the DLC, but I think they’re hitting their head on their ability to create difficult content that always feels fair. Infinite stamina, speed and health ain’t it. I felt relieved more of them than elation after beating bosses.
i always felt like Dark Souls 1 was the sequel to Diablo 1 i always wanted and felt like a natural evolution. seeing the series drift toward high octane action and open-er world rather than a tight interconnected thoughtful experience has left me a little sad, but man do i love the characters and art in this DLC. thanks for the thoughtful reviews.
I love this video. The discourse around Elden Ring and Shadow of the Erdtree has become so poisoned by complaining that well-reasoned and calm discussion has become depressingly rare. As always, your analysis helps me appreciate nuances I had never noticed or thought about, and puts structure to thoughts I previously struggled to articulate. Thank you. I do think it's a shame From has seemingly deprioritized the more thematic aspects of Dark Souls in favor of refining their combat system. And I find myself agreeing with many of your complaints about said combat - overtuned tracking, unreactable 'snap' attacks, overlapping damage sources, overuse of hyperarmor, grabs, and everything about the camera. But despite how bad all of these things are, I haven't been frustrated by them since my first playthrough. Somehow, I've learned to live with them, and I think it's because I disagree on a very important point. From absolutely pumped up the boss difficulty for ER as part of an ongoing arms race with their players, but in my opinion, I don't think they sacrificed depth for it at all. In fact, I think Elden Ring's combat depth and expressiveness is leagues and leagues above any other Soulsborne game. Malenia, Maliketh, Mohg, and Morgott are so fun to fight that despite all the base game's flaws - despite its bloated open world and overtuned damage scaling - I still come back again and again to do new playthroughs and challenge runs. If anything, I think SOTE was a step down in complexity from the base game. Bosses are, on the whole, more straightforward, with less emphasis on positioning, less combo branching logic, and fewer interesting 'gimmicks' as a whole. (I consider Mohg's fire and Malenia's poise to be ER's greatest gimmicks, to be clear about what I mean.) Instead, SOTE's bosses seemed to lean even harder into spectacle than the base game, and made up for the lacking complexity with damage scaling, speed, and a sprinkling of bullshit attacks. (Metyr's pulsar and Radahn's cross attack are what I'd call truly BS.) The best bosses in the DLC, like Messmer, Bayle, Lion, and Rellana, are only really above average compared to those of the base game. All this to say, I agree with many people that SOTE was a bit of a letdown, but for totally different reasons. I could have forgiven its disappointing anticlimax, or its failure to meaningfully connect with the base game, or its clunky NPC quests, but unlike the base game, the bosses aren't quite rising to the task. Instead, I'll probably remember the DLC for its vistas, the legacy dungeons, and all the new weapons and spells. Yet From did such a good job with just those three things alone that I still think it's a stellar DLC; possibly the best I've ever played. A mixed bag, to be sure.
I can't speak too much to the complexity, obviously it's not my fight since I'm a die-hard Dark Souls 1 Guy, but the damage on DLC bosses was pretty ridiculous. Radahn is still fresh in my mind, just attacks that take 90% of your HP followed by three more to punish your heal. And repeat. I also like the Mohg gimmick, especially with the antidote as a reward for exploration/questing (Miq's Great Rune is good too). Now that the player movement is really flexible (compare movement in DeS with ER lul) they could totally start introducing movement gimmicks beyond rolling. Finding a jumpable attack was always a treat, but even something more complicated like Waterfowl could be stellar with better telegraphing.
@@JimmyMcG33 the problem with all of the Dark Souls games is that they're not expressive, it's either all roll/R1 or just tank/out heal everything and win. Elden Ring gives you a lot more options with jumping, crouching, interesting ashes of war, better blocking on strength weapons, more focus on positioning over rolling etc. Just watch Ongbal if you want to see the best examples of how expressive it is.
What's poppin' Jimbo? Loved hearing your thoughts on the DLC. I also really enjoyed the more coherent narrative, and was similarly confused by people finding it obtuse. I'm a great wrecker of NPC quests, and still did almost all of them to completion just by exploring and checking in on the NPCs when it seemed reasonable. About the nectar imbibing part, I enjoyed it a good deal. It resonated with me as trying to get the same eternal sleep that Thiollier is, and also felt like a very lonely end to the long trip down to her. We meet Thiollier so early, and St. Trina's lillies are even in the base game, so finally meeting her only to be granted a futile semi-death loop struck a chord with me. Ultimately, different parts of the game will resonate very differently for each person, and I think that's part of what I love about it so much. My playthrough was very much my own, and FromSoft is willing to leave room for that to occur, not attempting to homogenize the emotional notes (as well as the combat or story), which for me is much more impactful. At any rate, loved the video, and keep up the great work!
Yeah I have mixed feelings on how much the game sprawls at times, but leaning positive. The "game reviewer" approach is to do everything in the game and talk about everything in the game but I have a strong hunch that you can only really play Elden Ring once, I imagine you had a similar feeling to me every time you _thought_ you got the last map piece, and then the world miraculously doubled in size. Since most open world games are terrible there's really no precedent for something like ER. On the one hand the themes and lore don't come together that well, but on the other hand everyone who plays gets a--sometimes radically--different slice of this world. It's very special in that way, you can only have more or less of the one Dark Souls story, but Elden Ring has six or seven different threads you're free to pick up and follow.
@@JimmyMcG33 I thought Leyndell would be the final area of the game, so I was utterly blown away when the game opened up yet again and /u/gidhub420 started to mention all the other Shardbearers. As much fun as replaying the game has been, nothing feels like going down into Siofra River for the first time, for example. Exploration is my favorite part of the game, like you, so the first playthrough was very special, but revisiting it has given everything an interesting sense of comfort and familiarity, so it's less like an adventure and more like wandering through a favorite national park or something. It being open world means that some parts are substantially less interesting than others, but given the game's already gigantic size and the love that went into what is there (along with rumored crunch), I think it'd be unreasonable for me to say that there should be even more than is already there. There's definitely an argument that certain areas could have been shrunk in place of more time to be spent on others, but I enjoyed the expansiveness, and I'd struggle to choose what exactly to cut. I think the bloat is also pretty easy to avoid upon replays, but it does mean you have to go and collect bell-bearings and stuff again assuming you're doing a fresh save, which is tedious at best. That all being said, like you I'd very much enjoy another semi-linear game, and Miyazaki himself did mention (in some interview he did in Japanese a while back) that not every project going forwards would be open world/like Elden Ring, so I'm excited to see what they're working on. Perhaps this is an odd comparison, but DS1 and Halo: CE occupy a similar space to me, as linear games that feel way bigger than they actually are. DS1 with its sprawling and interconnected level design, and Halo: CE with giant and open levels which offer a high degree of freedom of progression, they both feel to me like more than the sum of their parts.
The endless escalating difficulty makes me wonder how far this will go, if it's what from soft is bound to do now as people keep getting better and expect more challenge. Anyway, what i really hope is more tight and focused design on their future releases. ER never clicked with me because the world is so big. Too big for its own good, in my opinion. Lots of copy pasted areas and bosses. I'd much rather that stuff be cut. If i wanted to fight the same boss four times, I'd much rather load a save. I understand most people would never get to see all of them but since when was from soft concerned about "most players"? They know their audience. Doing the open world with crafting and collectibles routine feels like a major step back, even if the routine is done with amazing care and diligence. Something like demon's/dark souls/bloodborne level design. Somewhat open but still restrictive, with a focus on the oppressive world, and less on epic dudes in armour with beautifully acrobatic 1 hit kill combos. Having so much freedom of movement feels antithetical to the experience of being trapped in a decaying world. Ds1 and bb worlds in particular feel claustrophobic and unpleasant, and that builds a strong atmosphere I find missing in ER. But maybe I'm just not in the target audience any more. That's okay, i guess.
I don't think the bosses are better at spacial distance than you (the player), I think their targeting works like a radius, if you're in the circle you can and will get hit. As shown by all of their 360 auto hits
Yo Jimmy I cannot help but disagree on the NPC fight, it did become a slap fest of action figures; but I am used to gank fights that take the soul out of my body. For them to have a gank fight that felt even and also had a bit of story impact. That was my personal favorite part of the DLC
This is one of the best elden ring critique vids ive watched, the part at 25:09 - 28:48 express frustrations i have as a new player with the game viscerally. But the part from 28:48 - 34:37 gave me new perspective on how the engage with the game. Everyone says ‘there is no intended way to play the game, just the way that u find fun’ , but i always have an unshakable feeling that there actually is an intended way to play the game. U simultaneously addressed it while giving me hope in a sense. I also appreciate how you look back at the old, as a newcomer to FS’s games, im intrigued by their other titles based on things ive heard but not on my personal experience. I find my self a little more excited now to play those games (and the DLC) after watching this.
I find the jimmy videos pretty difficult to talk about the original jimmy is very important to me so it's hard to disentangle my little F feelings about the video from the big F feelings there are flashes of greatness in the earlier and later videeos but from jiimmy's insistence on moving the series deeper and deeper into exaggerated action has always disappointed me the videos I remember are the ones who got betteras I wathced them.
31:35 I’m a sword, no summon, and no shield kinda guy. Just run in and figure it out. And the bosses really didn’t piss me off as much as they did most people. Idk what it is but I really enjoyed most of them. Not remina though. Hard to dodge, easy to smash
im only 23 seconds in and i already resonate so hard with what you're saying. i loved des and DS because they were somber and contemplative games. elden ring is high fantasy rollslop and i just don't vibe with it. I loved sekiro because that was the action half of the souls formula done really well, and with little compromises.
