Fuck engaging him on the horse. Horse is 100% the absolute biggest trap in this fight. I was frustrating myself here, because I honestly thought Horse was key to winning.
No, key to winning is having a distraction NPC and being a Chad Mc Huge Cock and just run in with a bleeding claymore and let him have it. Won second try going toe to toe with him, especially because I procc'ed the bleed right about his 50% health margin. So I ended up only having a small amount and one distraction NPC later, had the fight in the bag.
He's still utter shit though. What a terrible boss.
I do have to say...that moment I saw the character riding at that convoy doing mounted combat the first time in a trailer (or maybe it was leaked footage?), I thought, "Aw, that's going to suck."
I'm going to maintain that the fight isn't half as bad if you just don't engage with the gimmick mechanic and just solo it. The problem there being, you need a lot of health to do that.
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AegeriTiny wee bacteriumsPlateau of LengRegistered Userregular
I do have to say...that moment I saw the character riding at that convoy doing mounted combat the first time in a trailer (or maybe it was leaked footage?), I thought, "Aw, that's going to suck."
And it does.
My main problem with it is demonstrated by that boss:
There is no defensive option on a horse other than speed and when enemies aren't good at tracking that speed, they are IMO too trivial. On the other hand, Radahn demonstrates why the horse is bad because he literally is designed to kill your horse and then instant gib you the second he does. You can't block with a shield while riding, which means you're immensely vulnerable to those sweeps and in stage two, being picked off by instant death meteorites from god damned nowhere. Not to mention his gravity well does a ton of damage specifically to the horse and eventually I realized the mount was a pure trap. Adding insult to injury as well, is that if he kills Torrence (and he can) the fucking menu asking if you want to spend a flash to res him WILL kill you instead. So I decided to try it the nigh suicidal way and lo and behold almost killed him the first time, then finished the job the second time. I just needed one distraction and the NPC provided it.
The fact he's vulnerable to bleed is a massive god send at least.
Speaking of gimmick mechanics (Volcano Manor boss)
I don't know why From decided "let's do Yhorm again, but two phases and actually hard." Once I realized that you have to delay your dodges a little against the grab attack and understood how the skulls worked it wasn't as bad, but still frustrating as fuck and I ended up saying "screw it" and Mimic Tear'd the fight.
I've stopped fighting bosses on horseback entirely, but that's because without being able to have my off-hand staff and my ash of war I'm significantly nerfed. I haven't run into a boss where fighting them on horse is actually better if you fight with anything except R1/R2.
Edit: That said, I think mounted combat is fine and I love it for small packs of weak enemies. I think the game would be significantly worse without the ability to use it. It's just often a trap and you shouldn't overuse it.
He's also very shittly designed in that his visuals match plenty of enemies for whom blocking leads to a depleted stamina bar and you get rolled.
Except no, he's super easy to block with a medium shield (Brass gang rise up) and dosent do that much stamina damage at all.
Just an awful fight.
I'm also really annoyed because I've found (very mild spoilers for recurring boss names)
ulcerated tree spirit, magma wyrm & falling star beast
all out in the wild. And it turns out all of them were clearly designed to be fought where you have access to torrent and plenty of space to move. They're even... Fun!
As opposed to the times where you fight them in tiny arenas in which case they're the worst. I'm not bothered by the copy pasting bosses, but I'm hella bothered by shoving them in arenas they clearly were never designed for.
Overall this is a solid 8/10, maybe 7.5/10 game for me. It's very very good 90% of the time and avoids a lot of the worst pitfalls of many open world games.
That last ten percent is a killer though, with janky mechanics, artificial difficulty due to said jank, world navigation options that just don't work as well as they should, and let's not forget the total lack of accessibility options. (Try playing with the sound off, and notice how much info you loose - then consider what it would be like to be deaf, for just one example)
I mean, this game is still a 9.5/10 for me even with all the janky-ass shit. I honestly love it, and it broadly doesn't bother me, but I'm also used to it from prior From titles as it's somewhat of a constant with them.
EDIT: I think there's areas where the game was clearly overambitious in the same way that chalice dungeons were overambitious, and a lot of the flaws come from that: issues where the boss design doesn't play well with the arena or camera, issues where some mechanics just don't gel the way they ought to. This is on the back of a massive game that is otherwise just incredibly fun to play and fundamentally mechanically solid outside of a lot of janky edge cases, though.
Winky on
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AegeriTiny wee bacteriumsPlateau of LengRegistered Userregular
I agree with that, but in many ways where Elden Ring improves something, somewhere else they double down on terrible mechanics and poor design choices. It gets over that because of how much sheer craft and love went into it, but it could have been an undisputed masterpiece.
Horsey lets me double-jump and smack giants in the face with my mace.
Unrelated: I ran into a boss (something assassin) in a catacomb last night and he started the fight with his health already down about 1/3. Anyone know what's up with that? I kept waiting for it to be some kind of trick/trap but nothing seemed to come of it. He just died.
Different strokes. I don't think "used to it" is a good defense for crappy design myself. I may be used too my lungs being shit, but it dosent mean I wouldn't get them replaced with better cyber lungs if I could.
Like wise at this point the lack of accessibility options is just insane. It's not 2010 any more. There's not even color blind options, from what I can see. "Hard games are our identity", grind literal defense, is crap. Your game can still be hard and accessible (see Celeste)
This is stuff that they don't get a pass on any more, and they really never should have. It's not like From is the only game studio I'll drag on this, but it's very frustrating to me to see the game get a free pass on some seriously basic arse shit
Because the rest of the game is so good! There's a ton to love here across many, many parts. But it makes the bits where they've not just screwed the pooch but set on fire too stand out all the more
Okay I am dumb, help my understand elden ring staffs:
I have two staffs, both have B int attribute scaling. I get that, that means that like, the more int Int I have the more damage.
One has a sorcery scaling of 152 and one has a sorcery scaling of 60.
However the one with a sorcery scaling of 152 only requires 28 int while the one with a sorcery scaling of 60 requires 52 int?
Is sorcery scaling bad…???
Assuming you have less than 52 INT, the reason it the 52 INT staff has a listed scaling of 60 is because you're getting a huge penalty to scaling due to not meeting the requirements.
Ooooooo, yes, I have less than 52 int (but not for long!)
To be clear, I'm not trying to attack anyone here. As much just trying to compile my thoughts on why the fandom around these games frustrates me, and also my belief that you're not going to change anything if you don't speak up
AegeriTiny wee bacteriumsPlateau of LengRegistered Userregular
Yeah I love the game, but for something that earned nigh universal praise to get a 97 on metacritic it has a lot more problems than I expect. It is a monumental achievement though - but I would still only put it second behind Sekiro for Fromsoft games.
HonkHonk is this poster.Registered User, __BANNED USERSregular
I feel like the horse is less horse and more speed+rotate modifier and they just happen to draw a horse on the monitor. I don’t find it fun and don’t think it feels good to use. Fighting mobs on horseback is okay mainly because it looks fun. But overall it’s one of the least convincing game horses I’ve used. The map design probably demands it though.
Now that I've discovered the power of Not Being Slow I'm on a tear through these bosses. Downed Godrick on my lunchbreak.
Now to agonise about what to do with the reward for ages.
If you're not going to use either option, just eat it. You can duplicate demigod remembrances at any walking mausoleum with a bell. You can dupe non demigod ones at any walking mausoleum. There's at least 2 bell ones in the world, and I assume more. I've likewise found 2 normal ones and assume there's more
But it's better to level up then sit on something going but what what if
Man, I wish I knew the tricks to get item find up in this game. I've been killing the convoy on the east side of Agheel Lake for like an hour trying to get the Noble's Slender Sword to drop (110 crit straight sword with Lordsworn moveset, but longer and with really high dex scaling). Finally got two weapon drops...noble estocs, so apparently only some of these guys with long gold swords have swords. Ugn.
At least I have it down to a science, early on the mounted enemies were driving me nuts. Now I sneak up and Blood Slash them and their horse before we get started.
Kamar on
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SurfpossumA nonentitytrying to preserve the anonymity he so richly deserves.Registered Userregular
Man, I wish I knew the tricks to get item find up in this game. I've been killing the convoy on the east side of Agheel Lake for like an hour trying to get the Noble's Slender Sword to drop (110 crit straight sword with Lordsworn moveset, but longer and with really high dex scaling). Finally got two weapon drops...noble estocs, so apparently only some of these guys with long gold swords have swords. Ugn.
At least I have it down to a science, early on the mounted enemies were driving me nuts. Now I sneak up and Blood Slash them and their horse before we get started.
Basic ass item suggestion:
Don't the lucky chicken feet boost discovery for a bit? Or do you mean besides those.
Man, I wish I knew the tricks to get item find up in this game. I've been killing the convoy on the east side of Agheel Lake for like an hour trying to get the Noble's Slender Sword to drop (110 crit straight sword with Lordsworn moveset, but longer and with really high dex scaling). Finally got two weapon drops...noble estocs, so apparently only some of these guys with long gold swords have swords. Ugn.
At least I have it down to a science, early on the mounted enemies were driving me nuts. Now I sneak up and Blood Slash them and their horse before we get started.
Basic ass item suggestion:
Don't the lucky chicken feet boost discovery for a bit? Or do you mean besides those.
Yeah, meant beyond those. Like, I bet there are hats and talismans and shields and whatnot out there same as the other games.
To be clear, I'm not trying to attack anyone here. As much just trying to compile my thoughts on why the fandom around these games frustrates me, and also my belief that you're not going to change anything if you don't speak up
I broadly agree regarding accessibility options, I think overall the culture in the gaming industry in Japan is really behind on that in general, though, in addition to From Software already being something of a throwback in their design principles. There are ways to preserve difficulty while also being accessible, it just still doesn't seem like that is a major focus for them as a developer. As they are over time making the progression from smaller studio to something that's releasing games on the scale of triple-A studios, though, it's something they're going to have to start seriously addressing.
I'm just not surprised of the general jank to the game, though, as historically the company has been famously unconcerned with polishing off sharp edges or avoiding "artificial" difficulty. I don't think that is in and of itself strictly bad design, though, it's more...an idiosyncrasy. Part of why they've gotten so famous is explicitly because they take this approach and it leads to some refreshingly interesting gameplay, but also plenty of unnecessarily frustrating or cheeseable gameplay. I think the issue is where you can't determine what was something the developers left in intentionally versus what was something that was clearly unintentional, and if them frankly just not caring that it's left in the game is poor workmanship or just a deliberate design philosophy.
It has it's own charm, in the same sense that a creaky rudimentarily-assembled chair can be considered shoddy, or it can be considered rustic. You're correct both in the fact that the chair was hastily assembled and that it's not nearly as comfortable to sit on as a nice sofa, but it has its own aesthetic that the sofa lacks. I wouldn't disagree if someone pointed out that the chair has obvious flaws, but the flaws themselves are part of the appeal to me.
I've stopped fighting bosses on horseback entirely, but that's because without being able to have my off-hand staff and my ash of war I'm significantly nerfed. I haven't run into a boss where fighting them on horse is actually better if you fight with anything except R1/R2.
Edit: That said, I think mounted combat is fine and I love it for small packs of weak enemies. I think the game would be significantly worse without the ability to use it. It's just often a trap and you shouldn't overuse it.
FYI you can use your offhand staff on horse back. My buddy was just telling me last night. Something about holding triangle? I dunno another one of those hidden mechanics.
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jungleroomxIt's never too many graves, it's always not enough shovelsRegistered Userregular
When I was trying to make the game play like Dark Souls I had a much worse time.
Shields are good, jumping to avoid AOE attacks is great, quickstep attacks are gospel. Rolling is a sometimes thing.
I've stopped fighting bosses on horseback entirely, but that's because without being able to have my off-hand staff and my ash of war I'm significantly nerfed. I haven't run into a boss where fighting them on horse is actually better if you fight with anything except R1/R2.
Edit: That said, I think mounted combat is fine and I love it for small packs of weak enemies. I think the game would be significantly worse without the ability to use it. It's just often a trap and you shouldn't overuse it.
FYI you can use your offhand staff on horse back. My buddy was just telling me last night. Something about holding triangle? I dunno another one of those hidden mechanics.
Yeah, you can hit triangle and press R1 and you'll pull out your off-hand, but you're switching between the weapons; you can't have both out at the same time.
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jungleroomxIt's never too many graves, it's always not enough shovelsRegistered Userregular
I've stopped fighting bosses on horseback entirely, but that's because without being able to have my off-hand staff and my ash of war I'm significantly nerfed. I haven't run into a boss where fighting them on horse is actually better if you fight with anything except R1/R2.
Edit: That said, I think mounted combat is fine and I love it for small packs of weak enemies. I think the game would be significantly worse without the ability to use it. It's just often a trap and you shouldn't overuse it.
FYI you can use your offhand staff on horse back. My buddy was just telling me last night. Something about holding triangle? I dunno another one of those hidden mechanics.
Hold triangle and tap L (for left hand weapon) and you'll swap
I definitely don’t think saying a game is X out of 10 is a useful metric or a productive thing to do.
All I can really say is that Elden Ring is one of the first open world games I have enjoyed, and not hated, possibly… ever?
There may be some open world games I liked when they were first becoming a thing but I largely hate the genre.
Of course, the fact I like it might mean that it’s not a good open world game? Haha, but seriously I like that I can just look at the map, see the map shard, put a beacon, and use my fast horse to run right there.
Then you have a map with nearly every secret already labeled? Like you can see every mine, every church, every ruin, every gaol, every wizard tower, etc on the map.
So you just drop beacons and ride straight there, and maybe you find like, one or two things of interest along the way but you get to skip pretty much all the awful fluff and filler that compromise most open world games, get your power ups off of a nice little checklist, and then you get to hop in all beefed up into a proper souls ass mega dungeon.
Edit:
And to build on what Winky was saying, souls games are rough around the edges and janky but that is also part of their charm to me. This charm does not extend to a lack of accessibility options.
Most AAA games feel very formulaic and design by committee to the point where I can buy a new one, be 10 minutes in and go “oh I’ve already played this” and lose all interest. I operate primarily in the small indie dev game space as a result.
Souls games bring that indie jank but also indie uniqueness with a AAA budget, but some aspects of the game definitely fall apart.
As a simple example, in most games you would have a hub area, and if you put the holy spell vendor there you’d put the arcane spell vendor there. That is safe, that is expected.
Souls puts the faith vendor in the hub world and then says fuck you we hid the arcane vendor somewhere in the world, good luck fucker.
And I can see that putting folks off but it also makes me go “oh thank god something different and unexpected”
I definitely don’t think saying a game is X out of 10 is a useful metric or a productive thing to do.
All I can really say is that Elden Ring is one of the first open world games I have enjoyed, and not hated, possibly… ever?
There may be some open world games I liked when they were first becoming a thing but I largely hate the genre.
Of course, the fact I like it might mean that it’s not a good open world game? Haha, but seriously I like that I can just look at the map, see the map share, but a beacon, and use my fast horse to run right there.
Then you have a map with nearly every secret already labeled? Like you can see every mine, every church, every ruin, every gaol, every wizard tower, etc on the map.
So you just drop beacons and ride straight there, and maybe you find like, one or two things of interest along the way but you get to skip pretty much all the awful fluff and filler that compromise most open world games, get your power ups off of a nice little checklist, and then you get to hop in all beefed up into a proper souls ass mega dungeon.
Edit:
And to build on what Winky was saying, souls games are rough around the edges and janky but that is also part of their charm to me. This charm does not extend to a lack of accessibility options.
Most AAA games feel very formulaic and design by committee to the point where I can buy a new one, be 10 minutes in and go “oh I’ve already played this” and lose all interest. I operate primarily in the small indie dev game space as a result.
Souls games bring that indie jank but also indie uniqueness with a AAA budget, but some aspects of the game definitely fall apart.
As a simple example, in most games you would have a hub area, and if you put the holy spell vendor there you’d put the arcane spell vendor there. That is safe, that is expected.
Souls puts the faith vendor in the hub world and then says fuck you we hid the arcane vendor somewhere in the world, good luck fucker.
And I can see that putting folks off but it also makes me go “oh thank god something different and unexpected”
Have you played BOTW? Sounds like you'd like that one too. Though I don't know how it would feel after playing Elden Ring.
I think what makes this game a masterpiece for me is how they've designed this open world by subtraction.
People hate map vomit? No map icons, you get a basic map and you can add your own icons. If you go to an important location, we will mark it for you.
No journal. Not even a quest log. How are all these people related to each other? Where did that lady tell me to go to get that important quest item? Hope you wrote it down in your notebook!
The game barely tells you anything at the start. You don't even know what is possible or how large the world is. This lets them continue to surprise you with new revelations that in another game would not be surprises.
They're willing to let the player fail to notice something or fail to do something because they weren't paying attention. Most AAA game devs are not willing to do that.
Yeah, it's got jank and bugs and some of the bosses are super annoyingly designed. But I'm willing to look past that stuff because of what they're absolutely getting right about the rest of it. I don't like rating systems anyways. What I do know is that I can't stop thinking about this game and I've been spending all of my free time playing it or thinking about playing it.
I definitely don’t think saying a game is X out of 10 is a useful metric or a productive thing to do.
All I can really say is that Elden Ring is one of the first open world games I have enjoyed, and not hated, possibly… ever?
There may be some open world games I liked when they were first becoming a thing but I largely hate the genre.
Of course, the fact I like it might mean that it’s not a good open world game? Haha, but seriously I like that I can just look at the map, see the map share, but a beacon, and use my fast horse to run right there.
Then you have a map with nearly every secret already labeled? Like you can see every mine, every church, every ruin, every gaol, every wizard tower, etc on the map.
So you just drop beacons and ride straight there, and maybe you find like, one or two things of interest along the way but you get to skip pretty much all the awful fluff and filler that compromise most open world games, get your power ups off of a nice little checklist, and then you get to hop in all beefed up into a proper souls ass mega dungeon.
Edit:
And to build on what Winky was saying, souls games are rough around the edges and janky but that is also part of their charm to me. This charm does not extend to a lack of accessibility options.
Most AAA games feel very formulaic and design by committee to the point where I can buy a new one, be 10 minutes in and go “oh I’ve already played this” and lose all interest. I operate primarily in the small indie dev game space as a result.
Souls games bring that indie jank but also indie uniqueness with a AAA budget, but some aspects of the game definitely fall apart.
As a simple example, in most games you would have a hub area, and if you put the holy spell vendor there you’d put the arcane spell vendor there. That is safe, that is expected.
Souls puts the faith vendor in the hub world and then says fuck you we hid the arcane vendor somewhere in the world, good luck fucker.
And I can see that putting folks off but it also makes me go “oh thank god something different and unexpected”
Have you played BOTW? Sounds like you'd like that one too. Though I don't know how it would feel after playing Elden Ring.
I absolutely loathed the couple of hours I tried playing breath of the wild, unfortunately, as it seems like there is a lot of game to love there.
But personally it felt full of the mindless material gathering, weapon durability, endless time wasting content that constitutes most open world games.
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jungleroomxIt's never too many graves, it's always not enough shovelsRegistered Userregular
edited March 2022
Yeah, the fact there aren't any CLEAR THE OUTPOST FOR YOUR ALLIES missions is a huge bonus.
As for the jank, it is what it is. It feels like in the AAA space, your game either has jank or it's boring as fuck, because AAA fidelity don't come quick or cheap. So your choice is experiment with something new and have some goofs or do the same old tired, well-worn bullshit as everyone else.
I can forgive rough edges, I can get past them. I can't forgive a game being boring because I'll just stop playing.
The lack of a pause button is infuriating at times. I would like to be able to go pee without having to go back to a grace point and resurrect all the monsters I just killed. I'm sure it is also failing on a whole bunch of other accessibility criteria which is bad.
It would be a much better game if those aspects were fixed, but equally - the last game to grab me like this and refuse to let go was Persona 5, which I enjoyed so much I played through it twice and then played Persona 5 Royal back to back. Very different games obviously, but after worrying that my PS5 was just going to gather dust, I'm very glad to have something I want to dedicate time to mastering again.
The lack of a pause button is infuriating at times. I would like to be able to go pee without having to go back to a grace point and resurrect all the monsters I just killed. I'm sure it is also failing on a whole bunch of other accessibility criteria which is bad.
It would be a much better game if those aspects were fixed, but equally - the last game to grab me like this and refuse to let go was Persona 5, which I enjoyed so much I played through it twice and then played Persona 5 Royal back to back. Very different games obviously, but after worrying that my PS5 was just going to gather dust, I'm very glad to have something I want to dedicate time to mastering again.
Someone linked a PC mod a while back that adds pausing, but I can’t vouch personally for how well it works or not.
The lack of a pause button is infuriating at times. I would like to be able to go pee without having to go back to a grace point and resurrect all the monsters I just killed. I'm sure it is also failing on a whole bunch of other accessibility criteria which is bad.
It would be a much better game if those aspects were fixed, but equally - the last game to grab me like this and refuse to let go was Persona 5, which I enjoyed so much I played through it twice and then played Persona 5 Royal back to back. Very different games obviously, but after worrying that my PS5 was just going to gather dust, I'm very glad to have something I want to dedicate time to mastering again.
Someone linked a PC mod a while back that adds pausing, but I can’t vouch personally for how well it works or not.
I guess, I can personally give my high level of summary of Elden Ring with two equally true statements:
Yes, Elden Ring is a game full of jank, rough edges, bugs, odd design choices, and more that ideally should be fixed, ironed out, or sometimes flat out redesigned.
Yes, Elden Ring the game as it currently stands utterly delights, entertains, engages, fascinates and surprises me.
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jungleroomxIt's never too many graves, it's always not enough shovelsRegistered Userregular
I guess, I can personally give my high level of summary of Elden Ring with two equally true statements:
Yes, Elden Ring is a game full of jank, rough edges, bugs, odd design choices, and more that ideally should be fixed, ironed out, or sometimes flat out redesigned.
Yes, Elden Ring the game as it currently stands utterly delights, entertains, engages, fascinates and surprises me.
It's a land of contrasts
(It's easily my favorite in a long time, might be an all-timer, despite the questionable shit)
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Fuck engaging him on the horse. Horse is 100% the absolute biggest trap in this fight. I was frustrating myself here, because I honestly thought Horse was key to winning.
No, key to winning is having a distraction NPC and being a Chad Mc Huge Cock and just run in with a bleeding claymore and let him have it. Won second try going toe to toe with him, especially because I procc'ed the bleed right about his 50% health margin. So I ended up only having a small amount and one distraction NPC later, had the fight in the bag.
He's still utter shit though. What a terrible boss.
And it does.
My main problem with it is demonstrated by that boss:
The fact he's vulnerable to bleed is a massive god send at least.
Edit: That said, I think mounted combat is fine and I love it for small packs of weak enemies. I think the game would be significantly worse without the ability to use it. It's just often a trap and you shouldn't overuse it.
Except no, he's super easy to block with a medium shield (Brass gang rise up) and dosent do that much stamina damage at all.
Just an awful fight.
I'm also really annoyed because I've found (very mild spoilers for recurring boss names)
As opposed to the times where you fight them in tiny arenas in which case they're the worst. I'm not bothered by the copy pasting bosses, but I'm hella bothered by shoving them in arenas they clearly were never designed for.
Overall this is a solid 8/10, maybe 7.5/10 game for me. It's very very good 90% of the time and avoids a lot of the worst pitfalls of many open world games.
That last ten percent is a killer though, with janky mechanics, artificial difficulty due to said jank, world navigation options that just don't work as well as they should, and let's not forget the total lack of accessibility options. (Try playing with the sound off, and notice how much info you loose - then consider what it would be like to be deaf, for just one example)
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EDIT: I think there's areas where the game was clearly overambitious in the same way that chalice dungeons were overambitious, and a lot of the flaws come from that: issues where the boss design doesn't play well with the arena or camera, issues where some mechanics just don't gel the way they ought to. This is on the back of a massive game that is otherwise just incredibly fun to play and fundamentally mechanically solid outside of a lot of janky edge cases, though.
Unrelated: I ran into a boss (something assassin) in a catacomb last night and he started the fight with his health already down about 1/3. Anyone know what's up with that? I kept waiting for it to be some kind of trick/trap but nothing seemed to come of it. He just died.
Like wise at this point the lack of accessibility options is just insane. It's not 2010 any more. There's not even color blind options, from what I can see. "Hard games are our identity", grind literal defense, is crap. Your game can still be hard and accessible (see Celeste)
This is stuff that they don't get a pass on any more, and they really never should have. It's not like From is the only game studio I'll drag on this, but it's very frustrating to me to see the game get a free pass on some seriously basic arse shit
Because the rest of the game is so good! There's a ton to love here across many, many parts. But it makes the bits where they've not just screwed the pooch but set on fire too stand out all the more
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Ooooooo, yes, I have less than 52 int (but not for long!)
Thanks, that makes a ton of sense.
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If you're not going to use either option, just eat it. You can duplicate demigod remembrances at any walking mausoleum with a bell. You can dupe non demigod ones at any walking mausoleum. There's at least 2 bell ones in the world, and I assume more. I've likewise found 2 normal ones and assume there's more
But it's better to level up then sit on something going but what what if
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At least I have it down to a science, early on the mounted enemies were driving me nuts. Now I sneak up and Blood Slash them and their horse before we get started.
Yeah, meant beyond those. Like, I bet there are hats and talismans and shields and whatnot out there same as the other games.
I broadly agree regarding accessibility options, I think overall the culture in the gaming industry in Japan is really behind on that in general, though, in addition to From Software already being something of a throwback in their design principles. There are ways to preserve difficulty while also being accessible, it just still doesn't seem like that is a major focus for them as a developer. As they are over time making the progression from smaller studio to something that's releasing games on the scale of triple-A studios, though, it's something they're going to have to start seriously addressing.
I'm just not surprised of the general jank to the game, though, as historically the company has been famously unconcerned with polishing off sharp edges or avoiding "artificial" difficulty. I don't think that is in and of itself strictly bad design, though, it's more...an idiosyncrasy. Part of why they've gotten so famous is explicitly because they take this approach and it leads to some refreshingly interesting gameplay, but also plenty of unnecessarily frustrating or cheeseable gameplay. I think the issue is where you can't determine what was something the developers left in intentionally versus what was something that was clearly unintentional, and if them frankly just not caring that it's left in the game is poor workmanship or just a deliberate design philosophy.
It has it's own charm, in the same sense that a creaky rudimentarily-assembled chair can be considered shoddy, or it can be considered rustic. You're correct both in the fact that the chair was hastily assembled and that it's not nearly as comfortable to sit on as a nice sofa, but it has its own aesthetic that the sofa lacks. I wouldn't disagree if someone pointed out that the chair has obvious flaws, but the flaws themselves are part of the appeal to me.
I'm still gonna drag the shit out of them, but that's a really useful perspective
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FYI you can use your offhand staff on horse back. My buddy was just telling me last night. Something about holding triangle? I dunno another one of those hidden mechanics.
Shields are good, jumping to avoid AOE attacks is great, quickstep attacks are gospel. Rolling is a sometimes thing.
This is the way.
PSN: ShogunGunshow
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Yeah, you can hit triangle and press R1 and you'll pull out your off-hand, but you're switching between the weapons; you can't have both out at the same time.
Hold triangle and tap L (for left hand weapon) and you'll swap
All I can really say is that Elden Ring is one of the first open world games I have enjoyed, and not hated, possibly… ever?
There may be some open world games I liked when they were first becoming a thing but I largely hate the genre.
Of course, the fact I like it might mean that it’s not a good open world game? Haha, but seriously I like that I can just look at the map, see the map shard, put a beacon, and use my fast horse to run right there.
Then you have a map with nearly every secret already labeled? Like you can see every mine, every church, every ruin, every gaol, every wizard tower, etc on the map.
So you just drop beacons and ride straight there, and maybe you find like, one or two things of interest along the way but you get to skip pretty much all the awful fluff and filler that compromise most open world games, get your power ups off of a nice little checklist, and then you get to hop in all beefed up into a proper souls ass mega dungeon.
Edit:
And to build on what Winky was saying, souls games are rough around the edges and janky but that is also part of their charm to me. This charm does not extend to a lack of accessibility options.
Most AAA games feel very formulaic and design by committee to the point where I can buy a new one, be 10 minutes in and go “oh I’ve already played this” and lose all interest. I operate primarily in the small indie dev game space as a result.
Souls games bring that indie jank but also indie uniqueness with a AAA budget, but some aspects of the game definitely fall apart.
As a simple example, in most games you would have a hub area, and if you put the holy spell vendor there you’d put the arcane spell vendor there. That is safe, that is expected.
Souls puts the faith vendor in the hub world and then says fuck you we hid the arcane vendor somewhere in the world, good luck fucker.
And I can see that putting folks off but it also makes me go “oh thank god something different and unexpected”
Have you played BOTW? Sounds like you'd like that one too. Though I don't know how it would feel after playing Elden Ring.
People hate map vomit? No map icons, you get a basic map and you can add your own icons. If you go to an important location, we will mark it for you.
No journal. Not even a quest log. How are all these people related to each other? Where did that lady tell me to go to get that important quest item? Hope you wrote it down in your notebook!
The game barely tells you anything at the start. You don't even know what is possible or how large the world is. This lets them continue to surprise you with new revelations that in another game would not be surprises.
They're willing to let the player fail to notice something or fail to do something because they weren't paying attention. Most AAA game devs are not willing to do that.
Yeah, it's got jank and bugs and some of the bosses are super annoyingly designed. But I'm willing to look past that stuff because of what they're absolutely getting right about the rest of it. I don't like rating systems anyways. What I do know is that I can't stop thinking about this game and I've been spending all of my free time playing it or thinking about playing it.
I absolutely loathed the couple of hours I tried playing breath of the wild, unfortunately, as it seems like there is a lot of game to love there.
But personally it felt full of the mindless material gathering, weapon durability, endless time wasting content that constitutes most open world games.
As for the jank, it is what it is. It feels like in the AAA space, your game either has jank or it's boring as fuck, because AAA fidelity don't come quick or cheap. So your choice is experiment with something new and have some goofs or do the same old tired, well-worn bullshit as everyone else.
I can forgive rough edges, I can get past them. I can't forgive a game being boring because I'll just stop playing.
It would be a much better game if those aspects were fixed, but equally - the last game to grab me like this and refuse to let go was Persona 5, which I enjoyed so much I played through it twice and then played Persona 5 Royal back to back. Very different games obviously, but after worrying that my PS5 was just going to gather dust, I'm very glad to have something I want to dedicate time to mastering again.
Someone linked a PC mod a while back that adds pausing, but I can’t vouch personally for how well it works or not.
Nothing like knocking a boss onto its butt after taking off like a fifth of its health.
PSN: ShogunGunshow
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I'm on PS5, alas.
Yes, Elden Ring is a game full of jank, rough edges, bugs, odd design choices, and more that ideally should be fixed, ironed out, or sometimes flat out redesigned.
Yes, Elden Ring the game as it currently stands utterly delights, entertains, engages, fascinates and surprises me.
It's a land of contrasts
(It's easily my favorite in a long time, might be an all-timer, despite the questionable shit)