Elden Ring Critique - FromSoft's Troubled Masterpiece

you don't need me to tell you that eldon ring is a good game it's quite rare to see a game achieve such monumental praise from just about everyone that plays it the best word that i can use to describe eldon ring is impressive it is one of the most impressive games i have ever played even after beating it multiple times i'm still blown away that from software achieved something this good with this grand of a scope but at the same time i simply can't echo the same sentiment that most people have shared because this game is very hard to love i firmly believe that the glowing reviews this game got were largely written when critics were still under 50 or 60 hours with the game to be clear that's not me trying to slam reviewers here but elden ring is a far cry from the flawless masterpiece that its review scores would suggest the early and mid game is breathtakingly awesome but beyond that point eldon ring takes a hard fall from grace and becomes an erratic rollercoaster of peaks and valleys it's abundantly clear that their time budget was stretched pretty thin due to the sheer volume of content and that some areas had to be neglected so that others could be polished the areas that did receive attention are absolutely up to the standard that we're used to with from software some parts of eldering will go down as the absolute best they've ever crafted and probably the best content that's been in an open world game ever other parts will leave you scratching your head in confusion over how something so absurdly bad could have even made it into the same game because of all this inconsistency i'm left in a bit of a predicament you'd have to be crazy to not recommend eldon ring if you're even vaguely interested in open world games or action rpgs it's certainly a must play but i'm not sure that i can say that it's worth finishing even though there's easily over 100 hours of stuff to do the last 20 or so can really sour the experience and it might be better if you don't play that far for as great as the game is that's a very major failing that's keeping me from calling eldon ring a masterpiece there is a silver lining here though whereas the problems with previous fromsoft games have felt much more ingrained eldenring is in a more advantageous position since i do think many of its core issues can be resolved in future patches not all of them but some i just really hope that fromsoft doesn't let that opportunity slip by because they've really made something special here but it needs a lot of fine tuning that's about all i can say without getting into more specific details so consider this your spoiler warning if you haven't played the game yet at any rate thank you for joining me let's talk about elden ring back when we were all still waiting for this game to release most people expected that eldon ring could be summed up with one simple sentence it's open world dark souls now that it's here i can say that that summation is surprisingly accurate no matter how reductive it sounds in many ways elden ring does feel like the grand culmination of demon souls dark souls bloodborne and sekuro there are shades of all of those games here for better or worse like its predecessors alden ring opens with a cinematic the lands between have fallen into disarray after some cataclysmic event known as the shattering the elden ring was destroyed and pieces of it were claimed by a group of demigods scattered throughout the world as a tarnished your goal is to reclaim those pieces restore the elden ring and become something called eldon lord i don't have much to say on the story of eldon ring other than that it serves the game fine the world building is good and the lore is interesting to read but as far as presentation and execution goes it's nothing we haven't seen before you wake up in some kind of prison go through a basic tutorial and just like that you're greeted with the vast and beautiful landscape of limb grave stepping into limb grave for the first time immediately sets the tone for what the game is about i know this comparison is probably overdone but i'm going to use it anyway the opening of elden ring reminds me of breath of the wild in terms of how much freedom you're presented with but even that game confines you to its first area until you've completed a handful of tutorial tasks elden ring takes a much bolder approach by letting you wander off the beaten path immediately you can go anywhere in limbrave right off the bat you could even leave the area if you're so inclined the game embraces non-linearity spectacle and player freedom above all else and it revels in all of the benefits and drawbacks that that brings one thing i appreciate is how unassuming the game is in directing you along its main quest line the first npc you meet will explain that sights of grace this game's version of bonfires all have a faint line coming out of them that guides you along the supposed intended progression path these lines can also be seen on the map where they're more prominent aside from that there's nothing here that reminds you of your objective or tells you where you're supposed to go npcs don't really tell you about major points of interest and the only map markers are the ones that you place for yourself the main dungeons don't have anything to signal their location only some graces have these lines to begin with and if you ever stray off course there's nothing really to indicate it this may seem minor but i think it's important to note to gain an understanding of this game's approach to exploration there's a relative indifference in how you proceed even though there's clearly an intended order to tackle the regions in elder ring has enough confidence in itself that it doesn't need to advertise its own content to make sure you've seen everything you supposedly should see if anything these lines only exist to prevent you from getting lost they're gentle reminders instead of forceful ones and i really appreciate that a lack of direction might be the biggest thing that sets elden ring apart from other aaa titles and i have to commend fromsoft for taking that sort of approach stripping away land point markers quest markers and all of that is a very simple change but it has a profound impact on how the game plays and the sort of emotions that it evokes from you the souls series has always had a very personal touch to it in the sense that almost everyone can recall their stories of playing them for the first time you remember your unique discoveries accomplishments and how you overcame the adversity that they threw at you i think the journey that you embark on in eldon ring amplifies this feeling even further by virtue of that journey being in your complete control without any pressure exerted on you from the game if there's one thing this game gets right over other souls born games it's exploration anyone who talks about elden ring would be doing it a disservice if they didn't talk about the scale of the lands between because it's absurd in how huge and dense it is it's not just the scope of the world that blew me away but also how it's presented elden ring is gorgeous and it brilliantly leverages that beauty and how it presents itself a clear effort was made to present the world in an enticing manner because of how often you see one of these wide-angle shots overlooking an upcoming region before you start exploring it as if to build anticipation and i really love that feeling true to an open world elden ring also lets you go anywhere that you can see it gets you eager to explore whatever region or dungeon you've just discovered since these views aren't just backdrops against some true level they are the level a particularly memorable moment of that excitement in awe is when you enter landl for the first time this is my favorite dungeon in the entire game and its introduction deserves a sizable amount of credit for that it's one thing to overlook this network of city streets that lie beneath the towering stone dragon it's beautiful and scenic and one of many times in the game where i had to pause for a minute just to soak it all in but it's another thing entirely to actually explore every inch of the streets that you were just gawking at you really are a small adventure having an impact on this massive world around you standing on the cliffs of leone is another example and being able to look down at the massive foggy lake that sleeps below the sense of adventure that eldering creates through its landscape and world is unrivaled in the genre as far as i'm concerned even more astounding than that is how often the game pushes its own boundaries more than you thought were possible i think it's safe to say that this game turned out bigger than anyone had anticipated because the lands between is absolutely gigantic there are several moments where i was astounded at how the map could possibly find ways to expand after i was so sure that i had seen everything the best example i have of this is when i first descended into seal for a river which is an anecdote that i think many people will be able to relate to there's a well in limb grave that you can find with a massive elevator that takes you to the underground but i never found that elevator until a few dozen hours in which turned out to be a massive blessing after clearing korea manor in lyrnia you can start ronnie's side quest which will actually send you to ceo for a river as your first objective now keep in mind this quest isn't accessible until around 20 to 40 hours in the game depending on how much you've explored so at that point my expectations of the world were still somewhat modest i did almost all of limgrave and most of eastern lehernia and they were so packed with content that i was only expecting another one or two regions like them because surely anything more than that would have to be insane right so i accepted ronnie's quest met blythe and started looking for the sea over a riverwell i went to the mistwood and began going down the elevator expecting some kind of mini dungeon similar to the catacombs or crystal caves found in the rest of the world but i was wrong the elevator kept going and going and going it was almost comically long as if to build suspense over where it was taking you eventually this purple cosmic-themed sky pops up in the distance you can see the bottom and suddenly it feels like there's this whole new world above you venture in a little bit further and then it clicks this is a whole new layer of the lanes between nested beneath the already gargantuan one that you've been exploring granted the underground isn't nearly as big as the above ground but that didn't matter the sheer awe that i felt when making this realization was still an incredible moment my comprehension of the world was expanding in ways that i never would have guessed could happen the scope of the game really began to dawn on me and it was without a doubt one of the most exciting moments i've had with the game in the last several years it's just going down an elevator in a well but it was incredible it kind of reminds me i guess of kicking down a ladder and undead burg and suddenly this whole level design philosophy kind of clicks with you i don't know it felt a little bit like that a similar feeling was elicited from the transporter and weeping peninsula that takes you to the opposite side of the world it brings you to the upper bound of the map all the way to the capital and shows you just how much space there is to fill in between and then there's another transporter like that that takes you to the most northern section of caled and then there's another massive elevator waiting for you in leonia that takes you to a whole other underground area separate from seofra and then later you find out that siofora still connects to a third goddamn underground level i could keep going here but i think you get the point that feeling of realization and subsequent wonder of pushing the boundaries of the map is magical and that really can't be understated for me it's the best thing that this game does this information is also obscured from you until you first discover it the map doesn't really give any hints over how big things are really going to get this ties a bit to the game's lack of direction that i was talking about earlier imagine a version of eldon ring where the map isn't covered in clouds and instead shows a silhouette of the entire world or where points of interest like the ceo for a riverwell are already marked for you when you first get your map it would undoubtedly spoil some of the magic and i think that goes to show part of why exploration is done so masterfully here creating such a vast non-linear world like the lands between poses a lot of design challenges that are difficult to overcome i think there's a strong argument to be made that most open world games released in the last five to seven years have failed to address some particularly common open world blunders namely how do you make a massive world interesting without adding in a bunch of filler [ __ ] eldon ring is also a standout here in that it solves this problem so well that many players suddenly realize what other open world games have been missing this whole time the issue is that it fails to keep that momentum towards the end and that manifests in the form of balance issues rushed areas and some really poor bosses that put a giant orange splotch on an otherwise beautiful canvas but let's stay positive for now and get more specific why does elden ring stand out against other open world games what makes the landsbetween so much more fun to explore we aren't talking about visuals or spectacle anymore we're talking about the minute to minute gameplay of traversing on torrent finding new landmarks and things like that the reason i think is pretty simple there's so much side content that almost nothing feels barren regions are adequately filled with dungeons and landmarks that you feel like you're finding something new at every corner except for the end game that's a big asterisk you could put at the end of most comets praising this game to be honest that side content comes in many shapes and sizes a decent portion of it is the minor dungeons that are absolutely everywhere these are short relatively linear levels that i mostly view as combat trials all of them have their own enemy varieties and bosses at the end that you need to overcome to get a reward most of these dungeons don't have very complex layouts which is why i view them more as an opportunity to play around with combat although there are a handful that have things like shortcuts and loops they tend to keep it simple here and that's okay it's a nice break from the exploration overload you'll often be feeling the main criticism i can lay here is that it's very possible that you'll be burnt out on doing these small dungeons by the mid to late game this is partially due to the sheer volume of them by my count there are about 50 in the entire game but that's not the only problem these dungeons aren't all unique in their layouts and atmosphere instead they typically have one theme from a pool of around four or five standard caves or tunnels crystal caves catacombs and the occasional grave every minor dungeon is going to fit into one of these molds that repetition can make it easy to get tired of these dungeons fairly early especially when you consider that they can be pretty hit or missing quality and that you aren't actually guaranteed a useful reward out of them a consequence of elden rings immense build variety is immense loot variety and nothing shows that better than these the odds of you getting something applicable to your current build is pretty slim and many bosses in these dungeons give a surprisingly low amount of runes this is also true of the other random points of interest you can find ruins or encampments usually have an item just lying there for you to loot but again it'll seldom be something that you can actually try for your build in fact the only thing that i can think of right now that has universally useful rewards are the churches which typically have a sacred tier to increase the potency of your flask it's hard for me to be harsh with any of these criticisms because it's unreasonable to expect all 50 minor dungeons to be unique in theme and layout due to development constraints and i think the huge build variety is worth dungeons giving unsatisfying loot sometimes since that's something easily avoided on subsequent game cycles at the same time it's a good example of one of those concessions the game had to make to be this expansive they do illustrate a more critical problem with elden ring though and that's an egregious use of repeated content but that's something i'll be talking about in detail later i'm satisfied enough with the quality of minor dungeons that i didn't get bored of doing them on my first run and they certainly made the world feel more like an actual world instead of being an empty wasteland that alone is enough for me to accept the flaws that they came with if we want to take a step up from these minor dungeons we need only look at the legacy dungeons these areas resemble traditional soulsborne levels much more closely as a reminder there are six of them throughout the game stormville castle raya lucaria the volcano manor landl the helix tree and crumbling farah missoula having gone through them multiple times i'm confident in saying that this is a strong lineup of levels albeit with some major hiccups here and there but what all of them absolutely nail is theme and layout there's lots of visual and atmospheric variety between these dungeons that give them a unique individual identity and exploring all of them for the first time was a great experience with maybe one exception that i'll talk about later since it'll segue into that end game criticism i've been itching to complain about anyway one of my main concerns with elden ring prior to its release was that fromsoft would neglect their brilliant level design capabilities and instead focus on making the world as rich as possible thankfully we're getting the best of both worlds here navigating levels in soulsborne games is often just as much of a challenge as the enemies within them with lots of shortcuts branching paths and puzzling loops back around to areas you've already seen before all of that is present in these legacy dungeons in fact i go as far as to say that lane dell is a contender for the best level fromsoft has ever made this place feels like central yharnam on steroids only a lot less gloomy landl is a giant confusing web of streets and alleyways that really tests your ability to navigate and remember important sights in your head more so than anywhere else in the game it's the only dungeon that i find myself still regularly getting lost in even after exploring it thoroughly several times and for me that's a huge positive landlord so big that it essentially has its own dungeon beneath it with the subterranean shunning grounds which itself has another minor dungeon inside of it there's a dungeon inside a bigger dungeon inside an even bigger dungeon have i mentioned how big this game is yet the rest of the dungeons don't quite reach the same heights but they still come with their own unique strengths stormville in particular is an excellent first dungeon because of how it prepares you for what's to come it's full of secrets and hidden routes just in a simpler package to make it more palatable to early game players it rewards your curiosity with how many items are sprinkled throughout including an entire roof parkour section separate from the main path that gives you a nice sense of what kind of secrets legacy dungeons have to offer i also think stormvale handles enemy layouts the best out of all the legacy dungeons there's a mixture of close quarters combat and strategic fights against groups that test your ability to handle lots of different situations the banished knights in particular are very challenging at this stage of the game and act as a very imposing threat that keeps you on your toes i do have lots of nitpicky problems with each legacy dungeon but if we're talking pure level design there's little to complain about one such nitpick is that i feel like raya lucaria is too short which was a letdown since the theme and architecture here is really cool some of them can also suffer from some poor balancing in some instances but from what i can tell it's not as bad as it was on the game's release which i'm thankful for i don't want to get too bogged down and looking at every single legacy dungeon individually because even though they're all good we know what to expect with fromsoft's levels and all of their skills in that department are present in elden ring instead i want to use one legacy dungeon as an example of how the game does other things wrong specifically the end game it's about time i stopped skirting around the topic so let's get into it the way i see it there are two major contributing factors as to why elden rings end game is so underwhelming too much recycled content and a very barren endgame region that does little to justify its inclusion at all the helix tree which will either be the last or second last engine that you do showcases that first problem very well too much recycled content the best way that i can sum up this level is that it feels like unfinished dlc everything about the heilig tree fits the bill for how formsoft has handled dlc in the past it's in a sectioned off part of the map not connected to the rest of the world you have to take a teleporter to get there it gives a lot of context for important characters lore wise that have only been alluded to throughout the main quest and at the very end it houses one of the hardest bosses that the game has to offer there's a dramatic spike in difficulty comparable to that of the dlc for the previous games so why do i call it unfinished well the first reason is that it's pretty short it probably won't feel that way your first time through because you'll die so much but on my second playthrough i was very surprised at how quickly i traversed through the entire thing if we don't include l-fail which is kind of its own dungeon i think haley tree is shorter than even raya lucaria the second reason which is more important for our discussion is that enemy wise there's basically nothing new here if i'm remembering correctly the helix tree has exactly zero unique enemies everything you encounter here will be things that you've encountered numerous times in the game previously the mages from raya lucaria show up there are giant ants crawling all over the branches on the upper levels even worse they retroactively hurt lanedill by putting oracle envoys here which previously felt like a big part of landl's identity one of the bosses isn't even special either it's a rematch against loretta who you previously fought all the way back in the korea manor i don't mind fighting loretta again because she's up there as one of my favorite bosses but her simply existing in the hallog tree is a bit puzzling because it just feels like there should be something unique here the halogen tree has a lot of lore significance and you have to go out of your way to get there making one of the two bosses here a duplicate is a very anticlimactic way to do things this is a problem that's omnipresent throughout the entire game it's just good at hiding it until around the 30 or 40 hour mark this extends from the minor dungeons to the world to the legacy dungeons i already mentioned how every minor dungeon fits some sort of predefined theme like catacombs or crystal caves but it's not just layouts that are reused it's also the bosses and enemies there are four dungeons in the game that have crystalline bosses there's a falling star beast in the caleb dungeon and at mount gelmer you fight godskin apostles and godskin nobles at least twice individually before fighting them together as godskin duo i could keep going here i would wager that at least 80 percent of all bosses in this game are fought more than once i think fromsoft was well aware of this because they try to compensate for it multiple times by putting a spin on the same bosses typically resorting to making them two on one fights aside from godskin duo there's also the valiant gargoyles which are just two reskins of the black blade kindreds that you can find in the overworld you fight two urgery avatars at once in mountaintops of the giants after doing at least three separate one-on-ones prior there's a two-on-one fight against tree sentinels as you approach landl and once again i could keep going here no one can deny that this game has tons of recycled content and i understand that it's natural to expect in a game as big as this and i don't want to make it sound like i'm ripping on the developers it would be monumentally challenging to make enough unique bosses to fill every area or event without adding on years of development time but it's a problem nonetheless for many reasons the first issue is that this becomes painfully noticeable in the mid to end game because if you've explored at least somewhat thoroughly you'll have seen basically everything that the game is going to throw at you nothing will be a surprise anymore because you fought the same boss or enemy in a section of limb grave or lyrinia everything essentially loses its freshness mountaintops of the giants is a particularly bad culprit here because it has the most egregious use of repeated content the whole region is chock full of the same enemies you've been fighting for the last 80 hours with one exception the zammer frost guys are unique to the region if you disregard the ones that you may have fought in previous ever jails aside from them let's look at the other enemies that you routinely encounter here there are the sword feet birds that you previously found in stormvale you have the fire monks that were previously in lyrinia and mount gelmer eventually you'll come across the t-rex dogs that were all over caled these guys don't even feel like they make sense to include here they were much more fitting back in their home region reusing regular enemies like this really hurts the whole unique identity praise that i was giving when we were talking about exploration mountaintops of the giant stands out for all the wrong reasons while limgrave leonia kalet and altus all had mobs and environments that made these areas special the mountaintops is only notable for being more boring than all of his predecessors it also has in my opinion the absolute worst instance of boss reuse throughout the entire game my favorite questline in the game is ronnie's because of how it sends you to lots of new areas you wouldn't otherwise think to go it's also one of the longer quest lines in the game since it spans so many locations and flushes out a handful of npcs it feels like slowly unraveling a mystery that has broad implications for the story and i thoroughly enjoyed it to top off that quest you travel to the lake of rot and ride a coffin into a major boss estelle natural born of the void this is not my favorite boss mechanically speaking but it's very memorable because of how unusual estelle looks against eldon ring's medieval fantasy backdrop he's a strange cosmic entity which fits a lot with the theme of siophra and nakron fighting him felt like a very unique climax to a very unique questline estelle also gives you a remembrance when you kill him which is usually reserved for the more prestigious bosses in the game but then there's a dungeon in the consecrated snow field where you fight a stell 2 electric [ __ ] boogaloo and it completely ruins how special he felt he isn't unique after all there's no special connection to ronnie's quest he's just another ordinary boss and bear in mind this is a minor dungeon you find him in not a legacy dungeon not from a quest yeelu annex tunnel is just a regular cave lying out in the open i hate it estella is not the only major boss that gets reused but he sticks out so much because of how much it soiled the finale of ronnie's quest now i should make something clear here in that a boss being recycled does not necessarily mean that it's bad it becomes an issue when otherwise special bosses are copy pasted with no context and absolutely no changes between instances the unfortunate part is that most reused bosses in elden ring fit this description estelle the regal ancestor godric and moog all fall under this umbrella it just feels like they were copied because from didn't have time to create a new boss for those respective areas for an example of boss reuse that's almost good we can look at margat and morgot they're the same character but their fights happen in completely unique contexts and with enough differences that it would be a cool pair ahead from soft not made one crucial mistake with it marget is likely the first boss players we'll see and he's memorable for many reasons but the main takeaway is that he's brutally difficult for a beginner boss you could argue that he might even be too difficult and that he could sour new players on the elden ring experience since he's such a massive roadblock in reality i think he has the opposite effect it sends the message that you can find other things to do around the world if a boss is giving you too much trouble then when you come back and finally beat him there's a feeling that you've conquered something that was previously giving you hell i think margaret is a good memorable boss because of that margate gets reused in the altus plateau the problem is that he's reused twice for a total of three encounters across the game you fight him again as moore got the omen king at the end of lane del and like in stormvale it's a good fight it may be a little on the easy side but compared to margate morgot is much more agile and throws enough curveballs with his attacks that keep them recognizable but not completely identical thematically you can also really tell that it's a grudge match morgot clearly has a vendetta against you and shows a strong desperation to prevent you from becoming elden lord his attacks are incredibly flashy and erratic to reflect this and his mid-fight dialogue is some of my favorite in the game it's all quite fitting marget is the first major hurdle you encounter and here he is again at the capitol trying to stop you from taking the throne if it stopped there then i think reusing market would have worked very well unfortunately you actually find him once before the morgot fight he's guarding an entrance to the capital in the altas plateau and begins speaking to you as you approach before appearing for a rematch this is a much less spectacular fight overall since he's not presented as a boss he is just a normal enemy his moveset is also completely identical to the first market fight from what i could see having him appear here takes away from the dramatic oomph of fighting him as morgot in the capital instead of having him surprisingly reappear in his powered-up form and ready for a rematch his entrance comes off as more as alright you're supposed to be here placing a market fight back at the capital entrance felt like the game was spoiling its own twist and that's a real shame estelle might have already highlighted the next endgame problem i'm going to talk about but there's more to it than just him mountaintops of the giants is much more barren than every other region in the game and clearly had less thought and care put into it almost to the point where i question if its inclusion is a net negative entirely it's easily the least dense with content compared to everywhere else for starters we can look at this empirically by comparing how many points of interest it has relative to other regions here's a quick summary of how many points of interest every location has these include every named location on the map including minor ones like ronnie's rise and celluvis rides so it won't be perfect but for illustrative purposes it helps me make my point let's break this down really quick caleb has the same number of points of interest but a large section of that region was sectioned off to serve as radon's arena so it's a lot more dense you can wander around there and still easily find stuff to do altus plateau also has the fewest if you don't include mount gelmer but those areas are interconnected enough that i'd say gelmer is to altus what weeping peninsula is to limgrave altus also has lane del which is probably the biggest legacy dungeon in the game there's no shortage of content there mountaintops on the other hand has nothing like that size-wise it feels just as large as limgrave and lyrinia but without the minor dungeons to fill in all of that space exploring it feels like eldon ring has suddenly regressed from a brilliant open world adventure to a wasteland where you spend more time traversing than exploring which is the problem with many open world games that from soft saw to rectify and they succeeded at that until now this makes me wonder what purpose the mountaintops serve to begin with considering how lacking it is and stuff to do at best it could be viewed as a way to expand the spectacle of the game further than it already was but at that point fromsoft is falling for the same trap that other open world games do prioritizing quantity over quality if we step away from that and look at what the region does have it's all much weaker than the best that elton ring has to offer whether it be due to time constraints or just poor design on their part the content present in this region is clearly less thoughtful and puts a damper on the whole experience there was already a stells repeat dungeon but there are at least two other awful places in the mountain tops that i can think of that are worth talking about to highlight this the first is castle soul castle soul is the largest dungeon within the region itself even though it's comparable in size to things like the shaded castle and castle mourn the layout is fine but the enemies and boss completely ruin it there's already a lion gang squad at the very beginning which is a technique that i think the game relies on too heavily in its final sections this sort of enemy placement can be done well when it's used to keep you on your toes but to me that's best achieved by ganking you with weaker enemies that can be handled more reasonably when placed in groups these lions are fun to fight one-on-one not so much two-on-one lions aside the dual sword frost guys found here rival the bloodborne shark giants for how cheap they feel despite being a normal enemy they have tons of hp deal lots of damage even at 50 plus vigor have extremely long combos can teleport around instantly and to top it all off they have this beyblade spin to win [ __ ] that i have never figured out how to fully dodge this is my least favorite enemy in the entire game yes even more than the dogs and the birds which incidentally both appear in this dungeon too i have an extremely hard time believing that they were thoroughly tested prior to release mainly because of how frustrating that spin attack is it tracks you to an insane degree and if you get hit once odds are you're going to be stun locked into the rest of it then you get to fight another one of these alongside a second banish knight and commander nile the area boss i'm not really sure why they felt the need to include these summons in the nile fight this is one of many times in the late game where they crossed the line from difficult to unfair in my opinion nile himself is an interesting enough enemy that i would have enjoyed this fight well enough without his summons backing him up castle soul was the major indicator to me that the mountaintops weren't tested properly lots of enemies here have absurd health absurd damage or both i wonder if it was even worse at the game's launch because fromsoft has done balance changes since then i just never got this far at the time to see either way what would have been a pretty neat dungeon is ruined by overtuned enemies and a bloated boss fight yet somehow with all of its problems it's still not the worst area in the region that honor goes to ordina liturgical town which is so asinine i can't even tell what their intention was with it aside from throwing in something stupid and cackling an amusement over how annoying it'll be i feel like i'm just ranting at this point but i don't care it deserves it it's so i don't know what they were thinking man or dino liturgical town is the place you have to go to reach the halo tree and it entails solving a puzzle requiring you to light four torches hidden around town but for some reason this town is filled with a bunch of nonsense enemies that make such a simple task painstakingly frustrating there are the invisible black knife assassin enemies lurking around who can approach you in complete silence and attack with zero indication of where they are no sound cue no visual tell nothing they can grab you unexpectedly and do ridiculous damage without any telegraph and when you start swinging wildly and manage to land a hit they run away into an invisible again in the blink of an eye i think there's a total of three of them in the area but i don't know for sure because i make it a point to brute force this place every time i sprint past everything i can light a torch die light the next torch rinse and repeat until i'm done it seriously feels like something a five year old would design and feel like a genius for because they're conflating difficulty with fun without realizing that they're creating something that nobody actually wants to play and i know there's an item you can find to reveal these enemies but to me that's not a good enough excuse it's easy to miss and more importantly there is nothing in the area that indicates you should even try the sentry torch to begin with i would wager that finding it naturally is something that a very small percentage of players have actually done and i'm a pretty firm believer that if players are expected to look stuff up to have an easier time with the game you aren't communicating enough to them in addition to the black knight assassins you also have to deal with these bow and arrow guys who will shoot projectiles at you non-stop while you're platforming to reach the other torches i wouldn't really have a problem with this if it felt like they actually shot in sync but they don't it feels like whenever one has stopped shooting the other has just started and your only hope is to sprint aimlessly hoping you won't get hit and they're actually shooting three arrows at a time so if you do get hit there's the possibility of getting one shot something else that i think needs way better balancing okay i think that's it for ranting in summary the mountaintops overall were a massive disappointment and i think you could argue that the game could have ended at landl if they found a way to squeeze in the halogen tree pharah missoula and the last few major bosses speaking of which crumbling farm missoula is a good enough dungeon that'll tolerate going through the mountaintops to get to it but it's a shame that the game would be markedly better if the mountaintops was just smaller or even didn't exist at all the last of the game's problems i want to discuss is much more far-reaching than the end game and remains my biggest disappointment at the beginning of the video i mentioned how this game has been likened to the culmination of every from software game to date and while i agree with that in a lot of ways i also think that the desire to top all of their other works may have been a major vice in the development of elden ring from dark souls 1 all the way up to sakura these games have followed a trend of relying more and more on combat dark souls 1 and 2 are noticeably slower and much more tactical than the subsequent games your dodges and attack animations feel a lot more weighty which the game accounts for by giving bosses similar restrictions their attacks are equally slow and with clearly telegraphed recovery times which is what opens the door for you to land your counter attacks bloodborne shares many elements with these games but it has much faster paced and more aggressive battles defensive options have been streamlined in exchange for a much richer offensive moveset every trick weapon is unique in how they handle and your quick step style dodge is a lot faster than the rolling of the previous games enemies and bosses can be significantly faster because you have much better tools to deal with that these changes are all very noticeable if you play bloodborne after running around in dark souls 1 for a bit dark souls 3 returns to the series roots a bit by bringing back blocking equip loads and all of that but it's still noticeably faster than its predecessors especially with its role bosses also have quicker telegraphs animations and so on especially relative to previous dark souls again that's here to compensate for an overall quicker pace you're doing more actions in battle overall than you ever were in dark souls 1 and 2. combat was becoming a lot more involved and important to the series identity at this point then when sakura came around fromsoft doubled down and made combat the single most important thing in that game despite removing build options light and heavy attacks and a lot of other series staples sakuro had the most intricate combat system because of how it mixes and matches all of its mechanics and because of how much offensive play is rewarded despite being hard to master now personally i don't mind this direction at all i actually quite like it sakuro is a contender for my favorite combat system in an action game and bloodborne remains one of my favorite games of all time period but when it comes to eldon ring i think fromsoft has taken a lot of wrong lessons from these games and tried applying them in ways that weren't conducive to eldon ring's design the biggest problem i have with eldon ring is how it handles bosses in terms of movement and player actions alden ring feels like it resembles dark souls 3 the closest it may even be a bit slower than that but when it comes to bosses it feels like many of them are designed without that in mind because of their pace agility and damage output you could throw half of elden rings bosses into bloodborne or second row and they would be right at home it feels like fromsoft tried to replicate that sort of battle pace without understanding why it worked in those games let's talk about bloodborne a bit more because it's a nice juxtaposition to show what i mean bloodborne is a game that's all about aggression at least when it comes to boss fights many attacks are avoided by dodging into bosses instead of away from them which allows you to land some instant counter attacks before they swing at you again as i mentioned earlier this is compounded by your dodge being a quick step instead of a roll which comes out much faster and has a shorter recovery time the rally system exemplifies this even further by allowing you to recover your lost hp if you retaliate fast enough after taking damage if you do get hit sometimes the smarter play is still to run in and land some hits yourself to compensate for your mistake rallying also allows for some attacks to feel a bit unfair damage might seem unavoidable sometimes but you can still avoid losing health if you take advantage of rallying it encourages a constant back and forth with the boss it is for all of these reasons that bloodborne can and does have bosses that are relentlessly fast and aggressive between rallying the quick step and generally faster weapons you can fight at a much more rapid pace realizing this about bloodborne is a major click moment for most players you are the hunter and all of the enemies are your prey it feeds into the theme of the game by making you feel like a menace when you can swiftly avoid the barrage of attacks being thrown at you and counter with something just as brutal if we go back to elden ring many bosses share or even exceed the aggression found in bloodborne without giving you the tools to handle it and if a boss doesn't wildly toss a bunch of hitboxes your way they'll instead have some crazy mobility tricks or other gimmick that makes them frustrating to deal with with how slow you are in comparison the game really teeters on the edge between fair and unfair which was rare to see for this series before now i was paying more attention to this on my second playthrough when i was doing a strength faith build and i was really struck by how little down time lots of enemies have between attacks it's common for an enemy to finish a combo and only give you enough time to retaliate with one hit before starting up again even that counter-attack can be risky if you're doing it with a slow weapon i'll show a few examples to give an idea of what i mean godskin noble attacks so often and with such varying combos that it's hard to get a good read on what he's doing in this sequence he goes for his rolling attack then transitions right to a belly slam then into a sword slam that gives me enough time to land a single jump attack which i get knocked out of because he does another belly slam right into his jump attack this kind of back and forth continues for the rest of the fight until i run out of heels and lose beast clergyman and his second phase malikith shows this problem even better beast clergyman can swing his claw around a good five or six times then back away to throw rocks at you and reset the fight to neutral which doesn't give you any kind of advantage or reward for dodging his attacks and if these claw attacks come out quickly enough that your heavy weapons can become a liability because he'll hit you during your recovery animation after you punish him he also has some of the mobility tricks i was mentioning earlier he'll skirt around just enough to be out of reach when you go in for an attack and throw some more rocks at you malekith is even worse on all fronts because he attacks so often and has such crazy mobility that it feels hopeless to even try and keep up with him sometimes he'll do his crazy aerial projectile then lands and makes it look like there's recovery frames but then you get close to him and he just runs away to do it all again several of his attacks are like this and it turns one of the coolest looking bosses into a resounding disappointment with all these short punish windows you start to lose the sense of reward and accomplishment that the series is so renowned for because you aren't rewarded with much at all he'll sneak in one hit after having to avoid six and still risk taking damage or missing your attack if the boss reacts too quickly this can often result in a lot of turtling strategies where you keep your distance and only counter on the handful of attacks you've identified as safe and at that point the game has reduced your engagement with its content and it's no longer fun the other side of this issue is that many bosses have such ridiculously long combos that i was regularly left wondering when it was going to be my turn part of me wonders if this was something that was drawn from sekuro to do another quick comparison again extended combos are relatively common in that game because pairing is near instantaneous and highly encouraged to build up posture successfully deflecting a rapid flurry of attacks feels like falling into a very satisfying natural rhythm and it doesn't feel unfair because deflecting is how you're supposed to win fights elden ring has nothing resembling sakuro style deflects it has the dark souls style parry yet some enemies feel like they were trained by isian himself i can think of several instances of spin attacks combos that will hit stun you and a plethora of other curveballs to the point where it feels like they're emphasizing difficulty or spectacle over fairness this is part of what i mean when i say that trying to top all of the other games has ironically contributed to eldon ring's downfall bosses have become so overtuned and lost that masterful balance of challenging versus rewarding for as much as i enjoy the fight thematically morgot is a culprit here just take a look at how long his attack chain goes on in this sequence morgot thrusts with his spear does a four hit sword combo then pulls out another sword does a two hit combo with it pulls out a dagger swings it twice then pulls out a hammer to do a mini spin attack and then he's done now this is tolerable in this case because morgot's numbers are fairly underwhelming he doesn't do very much damage with each hit and he's pretty squishy despite being the gatekeeper for the end game so maybe trading hits with him is the intention which i actually did find some fun in on my strength faith run where i could actually wear heavier armor i was willing to trade blows with many bosses since i had the poise to deal with it hit trading helped curtail this problem a fair bit but i still don't think that's a reasonable defense because 1 the series has long established that learning patterns will let you avoid all damage and 2 not every player wants to play that way build variety exists for a reason and someone doing a squishier dex or magic build doesn't have the luxury of shaking off enemy attacks in some instances your armor won't matter anyway because some combos are so ridiculous that getting tagged once will spell your defeat if you've played eldon ring you probably know exactly which attack i'm about to talk about if eldon beast's elden stars move has been nerfed in 1.04 melania's waterfowl dance is now the most [ __ ] attack in the entire game not only does this combo have well over 10 hits in the entire chain it also tracks you with a large aoe has insane gap closing potential and worst of all it has an extremely slim margin of error when trying to dodge it if you don't position yourself and time your dodges near perfectly you are going to get hit multiple times i find the third flurry in particular really awkward to dodge because she'll sweep past you and the camera will try to turn around to stay locked on which can throw off your directional input and make you dodge into her that's not even it with melania's ridiculous combos she has this other one where she'll hover in the air and send out about six different phantoms at you each with their own high damaging slashes and there is nothing you can do about it this is actually another common pattern in this fight and many others aggression is often discouraged or outright impossible on certain moves most bosses do not allow you to take the initiative and engage in a constant back and forth you can regularly get punished for trying to sneak in extra hits or take advantage of cracks in the boss's moveset because they'll follow up with some unavoidable damage or pull some other trick that makes engaging with them extremely risky i feel like i'm getting into nitpicky territory here which i'm trying not to do with this script but this problem is present in enough fights that it makes me feel like i'm getting punished for just trying to play since we're talking about melania let's continue ragging on her the best way to dodge waterfowl dance's first flurry is just to run as far away from her as you can it's possible to avoid it with normal rolls from what i've seen but it's far too strict for a reasonable player to be able to do it consistently this means that if you are too close to millenia when she starts up this attack you better say your prayers because there is nothing you can do about it if you run in to punish one of her slower moves and she decides to use waterfowl you are going to get hit and possibly die because it does so much damage you are risking death by just walking up to hit her in her first phase she tends to use waterfowl pretty consistently once at around 60 hp and again at 30 hp but in her second phase it feels like she'll do it whenever she wants simply getting near melania in these scenarios is risking damage and once again you're better off resorting to turtle hit and run strategies i really despise this about her because she's so close to being an incredible boss fight it's amazing how just a single move can instead make her one of the worst she's one of the few bosses in the game who is consistently vulnerable to hitstun which would be a great way to facilitate more aggressive play but if you hit her too much and push her hp into waterfowl territory you're just asking for trouble here's another example the second mogue fight feels like there's almost no opportunities to be aggressive he can be very difficult to approach in phase 2 because his attacks have gained a new effect of spreading blood fire all over the floor which does damage and causes bleed buildup if you're standing on top of it his attacks have a very wide reach and spread it around so much that the entire arena can become a minefield and your maneuverability is severely crippled the move where he spawns a blood fire pool right at his feet will also cause it to cover him at all sides even from the back so if you don't have a weapon with some range on it there's no way to safely hit him if it weren't for all these problems moog would probably be one of my favorite fights in the game but this doesn't add restrictions in a fun or interesting manner the end result is again a bunch of waiting until his fire isn't covering half the goddamn battlefield this makes him one of the hardest fights for me and not in a way that motivates me to overcome the challenge i could go on and on with more frustrations here there's so much bloat on a lot of bosses that makes them difficult to fully enjoy i would like to address some potential counter arguments to this criticism because i think it can shed some light on how this whole boss design philosophy clashes with the rest of the game in eldon ring's defense maybe this kind of behavior is intentional maybe they wanted the game to be inherently more defensive and me asking for aggression to be rewarded more would be me asking for them to alter their whole vision my problem with that approach is that it typically results in fights regressing to a slow paced back and forth where the boss takes its turn then you take your turn with little room for expression or creative use of the game's mechanics if you can only slip in safe hits every now and then you're best off using only a text that you know hit the hardest and have the quickest recovery times so that you're ready to respond to the next attack i'm not saying that inherently defensive combat systems can't be done well but that it doesn't square with eldon rings specifically sakuro had a brilliant combination of offense and defense but the real beauty of that game is how you can control the pace of the fight if you know what you're doing the game rewards you for putting as much pressure on the enemy as possible since it prevents their posture from regenerating and gets you closer to landing a death blow when you switch to combat that requires the player to always respond instead of initiate like how it feels in elden ring you lose that unique sense of pacing and hand over control of combat flow to the ai which i find to be a much less engaging experience eldon ring gives you such a wide arsenal with the ashes of war guard counters jump attacks power stancing and so on but it's hard to experiment with all of those tools when bosses are so keen on punishing you for going on the offense in fact as i write the script i'm starting to wonder if this is why i found a tankier strength builds preferable to my usual pure dex light weapons approach because it plays around the fact that many bosses will just hit you if you walk towards them if you can stomach that hit with poison defenses it'll feel like there's some semblance of back and forth i don't know i really don't think that's the intended way to play because then what's the point of having so much build variety one could also argue that spirit ashes are the solution here there's already been a lot of talk over how spirit ashes have been handled in this game with a sizeable chunk of people saying that bosses have been balanced around using these summons perhaps that the boss's increased aggression and overwhelming attack patterns were done because there's the expectation that players will be using summons to hold aggro and take hits i don't really agree with that assessment because spirit ashes don't solve any of these problems in a satisfying manner now because of the state of this game's discourse i should acknowledge that there's nothing wrong with using summons at all they exist in the game for a reason and if you're playing in a way that's most fun for you then good that's the whole point i don't really understand why everyone keeps circling back to this talking point when there's nothing interesting to say about it just let the gatekeepers keep complaining and don't acknowledge it they're complaining about nothing it is a non-issue who gives a [ __ ] that being said i really dislike how spirit ashes have been implemented and i'm not sure if there's a good solution here if you don't use them which is how i prefer to play then you have to deal with all of this anti-aggression bloated boss design that i've been complaining about if you do use them it will trivialize 90 of bosses in the game and you can just wail on them until they fall over your spirit ash will hold aggro which gives you free opportunities to do whatever you need to do you can heal attack apply buffs whatever if spirit ashes really are the intended way to play then i have to wonder what the hell fromsoft was thinking because these things are meat shields that can just hand you your wins on a silver platter again that doesn't delegitimize them as valid battle tactics but it's very hard to argue that their ability to steal boss aggro will make fights so much more forgiving this is squarely against what miyazaki has iterated several times that these games are about overcoming adversity through studying the game and learning from your mistakes i like to think that spirit ashes is how the game provides difficulty options and that would be great if both difficulty options were actually fun most bosses are a joke with ashes they're also too frustrating without ashes they feel like a band-aid solution that you use to brute force the encounters that you get too fed up with and that's worked on me with melania in particular i have tried well over 80 times and i cannot beat her solo i have accepted that this challenge is well above me which i have never done for this series before it's a real shame that i've had to let the game beat me i don't want to end this piece on such a negative note so credit where credit is due elden ring does have some very good bosses that i still enjoy fighting loretta is one of my favorites in the game because she deviates from what most other bosses do her attacks are much more clearly telegraphed and have reasonable punish windows that make you feel like you're actually fighting she also relies less on a very overused tactic seen across bosses doing a large wind up then delaying the attack for a good few seconds before letting it rip this can be an interesting mix up if it's used more sparingly since it tests your ability to memorize timings and carry over that knowledge to subsequent attempts it's also a decent way to punish panic rolling but eldon ring has so many attacks like this that it feels like a joke that goes on far too long a repeated gotcha where the game is laughing in your unamused face i don't like how frequently this trick is used because it creates so much trial and error that makes learning bosses more of a chore loretta has an attack or two like this but compare that to bosses like margat the red wolf of ratagon or horolu whose entire identities seem built around faking you out and suddenly she feels a lot more tame her swings are a lot more natural in the sense that you can let your instincts guide you through the fight you'll see her start to swing he'll dodge your dodge will actually work and you can follow up safely ratagon is similar and if we pretend that eldon beast doesn't exist for a moment this is a very good final boss he has a mixture of fast melee swings long wind-up attacks and ranged magic that you can weave through to close the distance and bring the fight to him it also gets a lot of brownie points for presentation with how it ties back to the shattering and blasts the game's main theme as you fight him he works well as the finale to your journey both thematically and as a capstone challenge there's not much about ratagon that i find to be unfair or unreasonable yet he remains pretty difficult because of how much you need to maintain your rhythm against him he isn't unpunishable but he doesn't give you a whole lot of breathing room which requires you to time a lot of your attacks carefully and make split-second decisions about whether it's safe to heal at a particular moment or not he still relies on the whole delayed attack trick a fair bit but his moveset is varied enough that it isn't an omnipresent problem he has his massive slam where he'll hover in the sky for a few seconds as well as his golden grab where he'll hold his arm up menacingly like he's just waiting to catch you on your roll i think it feels a lot more fitting for ratagon because of the spectacle of these moves but also because a good final boss will test you on all the lessons you've been taught up to this point the game has made it clear that it likes delayed attacks so of course ratagon is going to have some too my biggest complaint with ratagon isn't with him specifically it's how his fight is connected with the elden beast i had a whole rant prepared for how much i despise eldon beast but instead of spending more time harping on bosses i'll just say this elden beast is such a boring slow paced battle that i'm pretty sure it gave me whiplash by coming right after ratagon i am straight up convinced that this just wasn't tested because of how half-baked eldon beast feels he runs away and spams ranged attacks at you and he's so big that you can really see what he's doing even worse elden stars dealing unavoidable damage that you just have to face tank it is a cardinal sin with boss fights as far as i see it i've seen some people report that elden beast has been toned down a lot in 1.04 but i do not care enough to play the game again to see for myself the fight is so bad that i'm not sure there's anything you could do to redeem it short of just removing it from the game outright i would have much rather seen a more interesting phase 2 of ratagon than this steaming pile of boring overall this is how i would rank eldon ring's lineup of major bosses it's very unfortunate how few of them managed to stand out this is also only if you separate ratagon and eldon beast into separate fights if i graded them both together i would say it averages out to bad i can only enjoy ratagon if i make that firm mental distinction between them there is a lot that you could say about every boss fight individually there's a lot that you could say about every enemy individually too but i'm going to put it to rest here i hope i've been able to establish my position and articulate why bosses in eldon ring have been so disappointing they are the biggest thing that holds the game back elden rings exploration and world design is such a wonderful achievement that has never been matched by any game that i can think of right now but it's also interesting to think about how many of the game's flaws are a byproduct of that and whether such a sprawling world was worth those consequences here's how i think i see it if you stripped away the open world with all of the pros and cons that come with it and just connected the legacy dungeons together to make a more traditional souls game there is no denying that you would lose the very thing that makes elden ring so magical i'm glad that the game exists just to give players that exploration experience but the boss fights and end game turn me off so much that i feel very little motivation to pick the game up again i'm not a person that values replayability very heavily and i'll be the first to tell you that all games have to end somewhere but i love exploring deep mechanics and combat systems i've done so extensively with bloodborne and sakura and have very fond memories of those titles as a result i can't say that i feel the same incentive with eldon ring and that's a pretty sore spot instead of feeling a sense of triumph over conquering a grueling experience i'm just relieved that i can finally put the game down but like i said at the beginning there is a silver lining fromsoft seems to have also identified these problems and have taken steps to fix them the last two major patches have been a net positive overall with bosses like radon being greatly improved and heaps of buffs towards weapons that makes them faster to use some parts of elden ring are very fixable and it seems like from soft degrees even so i think i've gotten everything that i'm going to get out of this game going on a journey through the lands between and seeing everything that the world has to offer is an unforgettable experience but i'm left with a sort of hollow dissatisfaction at how that journey concluded here's hoping that fromsoft can learn from this experience and improve upon elden rings foundation with either dlc or a sequel but given the craze that the game has generated in its current state i'm a bit skeptical thanks for watching i hope you enjoyed the video hey there uh just some quick unscripted thoughts before the video finally ends uh if you did actually make it this far thank you uh this was a lot of fun to make but it was also a lot of work more work than any of the other videos that i've done and like even now i'm tired i haven't stood here and recorded that much audio in one sitting before like god damn but i'm actually pretty satisfied with this video which i don't normally feel about my videos so i don't know i guess that's that's kind of cool if you happen to enjoy it obviously i'd super appreciate if you you know like subscribe leave a comment telling me what you think all of that good stuff i also have my twitter down below if anyone wants to connect on there i don't know um i do have some other videos in the pipeline i also might do more elden ring contents but i'm not super sure on that there are some topics that i think i could delve into more deeply and i would enjoy but i'm kind of sick of the game to be honest it's really all i've been playing for the past like month and a half two months so i'll probably take a little break from it who knows anyway i think that about does it for me so thank you very much again for watching and i'll see you next time

Channel: VG Matthew

Views: 405,133

Keywords: elden ring critique, elden ring, elden ring review, elden ring gameplay, elden ring analysis, elden ring new gameplay, gaming critics, game critics, fromsoftware, video game, gaming, fromsoftware games, vg matthew, elden ring bosses

Id: u7mM378ON18

Length: 57min 51sec (3471 seconds)

Published: Sat May 07 2022