Poll of the Day > I'm replaying Elden Ring before the DLC releases

(+) Yeah! (+)

I played through this game once on release and was kind of disappointed. Mostly because I cleared every dungeon and killed every boss I found, and the copy pasted dungeons and repeated bosses left muc to be desired. Its still a fun time, just not my favorite Soulsborne game. Anyway, Im doing the quest where you feed grapes to the blind girl. What a cute and wholesome questline! Im sure theres absolutely no way this will turn extremely dark and horrifying and lead to the total destruction of civilization. Yep, no way of that happening. Oh, also Im doing a pure dex build and I have 2 swordspears. I havent even been to Stormveil yet and I already snuck into Altus for a bell bearing to upgrade these bad boys.

papercup posted...

Im sure theres absolutely no way this will turn extremely dark and horrifying and lead to the total destruction of civilization.

This combined with frustration gaming is a large part of why I've never liked the various Soulsborn games. Everything is bleak and miserable, and there's no real happy endings.

George RR Martin basically ruined fantasy. Everything has to be bleak and grim now because "dark" gets confused with "deep".

I actually beat the game for the first time relatively recently, in the seamless coop mod. We even beat Malenia (who is just as hard in the mod, due to her leeching more health on hit). Fun game, I wish sacred tears and golden seeds were locked behind bosses and not open-world exploration tho

Seamless Co-op mod was awesome. I beat the game 5 times maybe? Got every major ending and all achievements, then once more in co-op.

homie bout to meet some fuckin fingers

i just replayed it and got the platinum a few days ago. aside from some annoying balancing issues late game, its a fucking masterpiece

DirtBasedSoap posted...

i just replayed it and got the platinum a few days ago. aside from some annoying balancing issues late game, its a fucking masterpiece

Yeah I never got the plat. Im gonna try for it before the expansion.

I got the plat but I save scummed the ending trophies I wasn't trying to do three full playthroughs for that shit

ParanoidObsessive posted...

Everything is bleak and miserable, and there's no real happy endings.

This seems like something you'd love.

Zareth posted...

This seems like something you'd love.

Nah, that's what real life is for.

I am hyped for the DLC, was thinking of doing an anticipation playthrough too but I thought I might as well wait for it to actually come out. wouldn't want to get burned out a couple weeks before release day

im on NG+ again and im debating if i should make a new character for the dlc

ParanoidObsessive posted...

This combined with frustration gaming is a large part of why I've never liked the various Soulsborn games. Everything is bleak and miserable, and there's no real happy endings.

George RR Martin basically ruined fantasy. Everything has to be bleak and grim now because "dark" gets confused with "deep".

these games arent quite as dark and edgy as they might seem. the humor and lightheartedness is just extremely subtle and requires an understanding of the lore which isnt easy to figure out.

but yeah, they are mostly depressing. I guess i kind of like that sort of thing

The Souls games are more sombre rather than outright depressing, I feel. They are all about declining and decaying worlds so the main tone reflects that but each individual character stories are not all just pure misery, death, and failure. Even characters that die find do so in service of moving on, finding release, finding reunion, etc. Death in those worlds isn't just turning into dirt.

Oh I killed a boss I apparently never found in my first playthrough, because it popped a trophy. The Dragon Knight Nokstella. :0

DirtBasedSoap posted...

im on NG+ again and im debating if i should make a new character for the dlc

Keep in mind that there will be end-game difficulty bosses in the DLC, and that if you are on NG+, the bosses in the DLC will much harder than NG (although you will be leveled up more)

Also, supposedly beating Mohg is required to access the DLC. If you haven't done that in NG+ yet, you will have to.

Yeah Mohg and Radahn are both required for the DLC. No idea why Radahn is required, because I dont believe you need to kill him to reach Mohg.

I killed the dragon at the end of Fias questline which I also never fought in my first playthrough. So all Im missing for plat is Elden Lord ending, Frenzied Flame ending, and find all the legendary items and spells.

Also a stray thought crossed my mind. What if the Erdtre is just a normal sized tree and the people of The Lands Between are just very very small. :0

Killing Radahn changes the geometry of the world a bit, maybe that has something to do with it

radahn is just holding the stars away

Zareth posted...

Killing Radahn changes the geometry of the world a bit, maybe that has something to do with it

Could be, but doesnt Leyndell also undergo some big changes at the end of the game?

ParanoidObsessive posted...

This combined with frustration gaming is a large part of why I've never liked the various Soulsborn games

Don't worry, you didn't miss much, between the horrid camera and controls, laughably bad targeting, an unrealized weapon system, etc.

ER is bizarre in that it's fun, but not a well-made game.

Yeah Im baffled at how the controls were never fixed. Its this weird combination of input delay, and inputs being queued up, sometimes for seconds at a time, that can make combat feel awkward and clunky. Im used to it again by now, but it still makes me go why is the game like this?

papercup posted...

Yeah Im baffled at how the controls were never fixed. Its this weird combination of input delay, and inputs being queued up, sometimes for seconds at a time, that can make combat feel awkward and clunky. Im used to it again by now, but it still makes me go why is the game like this?

Exactly. And the god-awful platforming, which comes way more than it should in a game like this. The part where you are on a giant tree branches surrounded by giant ants and bugs have really awful tank controls.

literally did not have any of those problems

ConfusedTorchic posted...

literally did not have any of those problems

Same. No input delay or issues with the platforming on my playthrough and I sunk like 300 hours into the game

CyborgSage00x0 posted...

The part where you are on a giant tree branches surrounded by giant ants and bugs have really awful tank controls.

Tank controls? Did you mean to say the movement felt sluggish?

Far-Queue posted...

Same. No input delay or issues with the platforming on my playthrough and I sunk like 300 hours into the game

i mean, i definitely had platforming issues, but that's mainly because it's platforming in a souls game and it's always been barely serviceable

but stuff like needing tank controls in the haligtree? that's nonsense to me lmao. it just makes me think you have no awareness or don't look at where you're going

CyborgSage00x0 posted...

Don't worry, you didn't miss much, between the horrid camera and controls, laughably bad targeting, an unrealized weapon system, etc.

ER is bizarre in that it's fun, but not a well-made game.

it has balancing issues towards the last 1/3rd of the game but it is well made

The horse makes platforming a lot more manageable tho with the double jump. Areas where you can't use the horse can be tricky but yeah nothing unusual for a Fromsoft game

what does "an unrealized weapon system" even mean

or targeting, like you're the one telling the game what you want to target and then it does that lol

Sarcasthma posted...

Tank controls? Did you mean to say the movement felt sluggish?

Correct. Having tank-like controls means sluggish, clunky, and feeling like you're controlling a tank.

ConfusedTorchic posted...

what does "an unrealized weapon system" even mean

It's a game that vomits a ton of really cool weapons at you, with dramatically different play styles, but caps the ability to experiment and switch between them freely without a ridiculously tedious grinding of smithing stones, which are finite to begin with, until being able to buy them late game. It's a game that seems to want you to experiment with different weapons and play styles, but makes it unrealistic to do so without a massive time sink on the player's part, rendering the point mostly moot.

ConfusedTorchic posted...

or targeting, like you're the one telling the game what you want to target and then it does that lol

The problem is, it doesn't do that well. I had far too many times to count where an enemy or group of enemies would be nearly right in front of me/dead center on a the screen, and would first target a bird I couldn't even see like 5000 miles away. It's extremely erratic and inexcusable.

CyborgSage00x0 posted...

Having tank-like controls means sluggish, clunky, and feeling like you're controlling a tank.

that's...not what tank controls actually are though.

tank controls are left and right rotate your body, and you only move forward the way you are facing. like resident evil 1, 2, and 3.

CyborgSage00x0 posted...

The problem is, it doesn't do that well. I had far too many times to count where an enemy or group of enemies would be nearly right in front of me/dead center on a the screen, and would first target a bird I couldn't even see like 5000 miles away. It's extremely erratic and inexcusable.

the game targets whatever is directly in the middle of your screen when you click target. you switch it then by moving the camera, it's entirely reasonable that you're moving the camera while targeting, thus making it switch what's being targeted making you think it's targeting something random when really it's not.

Placidusax? Mo liek Placi-ya-done-sax
FUCKIN
GOTTEM

Such a great boss fight that one

Elden Beast? More like Elden Least! Get rekt son!

So all Im missing for the plat is the Elden Lord ending. Gonna do that on my character from two years ago so that I dont go to NG+ on this character. So I can do the DLC in NG.

CyborgSage00x0 posted...

It's a game that vomits a ton of really cool weapons at you, with dramatically different play styles, but caps the ability to experiment and switch between them freely without a ridiculously tedious grinding of smithing stones, which are finite to begin with, until being able to buy them late game. It's a game that seems to want you to experiment with different weapons and play styles, but makes it unrealistic to do so without a massive time sink on the player's part, rendering the point mostly moot.

That's kind of soulslikes in general: Lots of weapon variety, but you need to commit to a build to really make it work and that means trying new things is gated behind either a grinding or starting a new playthrough.

You can respec your character, and it's not that difficult to farm for smithing stones especially if you go to one of the cheese farming areas

I wouldn't say Elden Ring is a perfect game by any stretch of the imagination but saying it has tank controls or that targeting and cameras don't work is a laugh and a half and saying that the weapons are unrealized because the game is designed for the player to choose a build for their character is equally laughable. The game controls fine. The weapons are fully realized if you spec your character to use them.

Not trying to come off like an ER fanboy but saying the controls are implemented poorly sounds like a skill issue, honestly. Saying the weapons are unrealized sounds like a fundemental misunderstanding of what the game is trying to accomplish.

I think the majority that enjoyed Elden Ring has, I've just finished yet another run but I kept Mohg alive, I'm going to kill him when the dlc releases ;)

adjl posted...

That's kind of soulslikes in general: Lots of weapon variety, but you need to commit to a build to really make it work and that means trying new things is gated behind either a grinding or starting a new playthrough.

Yep. Basically little evolution from the formula from DS, but it's a shame. Some of the weapons acquired looked really cool, but learning a new playstyle if hard enough. Grinding to get it leveled up to comprable stats to see if it's even worth your while is just sad.

At the same time, though, you can generally get a good sense of a moveset without seriously committing to building around a weapon, and there are enough resources out there to look it up and be able to tell whether or not it scales well enough to be worth investing into so you don't over-commit to a Drake Sword. Then, yes, it can be a grind to pivot your build into using the new weapon, but that's just how action RPGs are meant to work. If you come up with a new build idea, the intent is generally to use that build idea for a new playthrough, not try to completely change the character you're already using.

Now, how well that works in ER, I can't speak to. It's great in Dark Souls because they're short enough games (once you know what you're doing) that replaying with a new build is easy and fun. My understanding (I still haven't played it) is that ER is longer, so new playthroughs are a bit more daunting and that philosophy might not be as appropriate.

I've tested a bunch of weapons in elden ring just by throwing them on unupgraded and fighting some stuff. You don't need to deal damage to get a feel for how one plays. Just trying to land hits without taking damage can give you a sense of the playstyle and help determine if it's something you want to commit to.

Started NG+ on my original character. Played all the way to reaching Farum Azula, I even went and killed Mohg and Malenia for funsies. Too tired to continue though. Gonna get that plat tomorrow and then methinks Ill give Demons Souls another shot. Ive tried playing that game twice. Once on PS3 and once on PS5. Both times I got a couple hours in and stopped out of boredom. And Ive played through Dark Souls 1, 3 and Bloodborne like ten times each. For some reason Demons Souls never really got its hooks into me like the other Souls games.

adjl posted...

Now, how well that works in ER, I can't speak to. It's great in Dark Souls because they're short enough games (once you know what you're doing) that replaying with a new build is easy and fun. My understanding (I still haven't played it) is that ER is longer, so new playthroughs are a bit more daunting and that philosophy might not be as appropriate.

probably my #1 major issue, most loot is absolutely pointless because you will never ever use it. forget weapons and gear specced for other stats you are not building, there is not much point in picking up even stuff for your primary stat. my most powerful character went through the game dual wielding a great club and a morningstar, having boss weapons and special weapons available specifically for str builds, useless to me since I couldn't even fully upgrade either of my existing weapons (since I had 2). idiotic that upgrading weapons is still a mechanic if you ask me, it has been shit since Demons.

acesxhigh posted...

idiotic that upgrading weapons is still a mechanic if you ask me, it has been shit since Demons.

What's wrong with your weapon leveling along with you. Also, it's infinitely simpler than it used to be. Look at this chart.
https://gamefaqs.gamespot.com/a/forum/d/db388133.jpg

ParanoidObsessive posted...

This combined with frustration gaming is a large part of why I've never liked the various Soulsborn games. Everything is bleak and miserable, and there's no real happy endings.

George RR Martin basically ruined fantasy. Everything has to be bleak and grim now because "dark" gets confused with "deep".

I actually completely agree with this and think it's a great criticism, we should write more happy fantasy worlds just because it doesn't get done enough. I also don't like the gameplay of spending 2 hours repeating the same boss.

It's always got to be zombie apocalypse 3000 years in the future forgotten technology stuff. It's easier to write though because you don't have to come up with a brand new culture.

https://gamefaqs.gamespot.com/a/forum/7/7666b734.jpg

the demonic uterus

Yellow posted...

I actually completely agree with this and think it's a great criticism, we should write more happy fantasy worlds just because it doesn't get done enough. I also don't like the gameplay of spending 2 hours repeating the same boss.

It's always got to be zombie apocalypse 3000 years in the future forgotten technology stuff. It's easier to write though because you don't have to come up with a brand new culture.

Eh that's what JRPGS are for.

Platinum get! \o/

CyborgSage00x0 posted...

Correct. Having tank-like controls means sluggish, clunky, and feeling like you're controlling a tank.

You said tank controls, not tank-like controls. @CyborgSage00x0

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tank_controls