Elden Ring

[Moonface]

Yeah, I noticed that certain bosses show up later as regular enemies and I'm not sure how I feel about that either. I would prefer it was like Sekiro, where bosses that resemble regular enemies are their own special variants that are the climax of facing the regular enemies that are in that same class. At least then it wouldn't diminish a boss by relegating them nor would it have the feeling of padding or copy/paste by reusing a foe as an enemy and a boss.

Have you got a favourite boss yet @Dragon Lord (or anyone else who's played/seen enough of the game) out of those you've fought/seen?

[Dragon Lord]

Well, bosses becoming normal enemies later isn't anything new to the Souls games. Dark Souls did it with the Taurus Demon, Capra Demon and the Moonlight Butterfly. Dark Souls 2 did it with a few bosses as well. That's not something that I have a problem with. The problem with how they did it in Elden Ring is that I've encountered these normal enemies as bosses after I encountered their normal enemy versions. They went with quantity of bosses over quality of bosses, and that's not normally what they do and it's kind of bad to see.

I have encountered one boss that I liked a lot. Unfortunately a lot of bosses in this game are just... eh. I've encountered a couple that just feel so cheap. Fromsoft bosses are usually pretty tough, but you never really feel cheated. I encountered one boss that had basically no recovery time after its attacks, had insane reach, and had the good ol' Dark Souls 2 100% tracking on its attacks. Meaning that when it would do a big jumping attack, I'd roll behind it/to the side of where the attack should have landed, and instead the boss would do a mid-air 180%/complete change of direction and smash my face in with the attack. He also had another attack where he slashed twice, and the second slash was so fast after the first, that it'd catch you at the end of your roll from dodging the first slash. Boss just felt like a huge "fuck you" to the player, especially after it turned out that you can just stagger-lock the boss the entire fight with jumping attacks. :| Was not pleased with that boss. Felt like they over-tuned its difficulty, expecting players to cheese it like that.

[Moonface]

I have encountered one boss that I liked a lot. Unfortunately a lot of bosses in this game are just... eh. I've encountered a couple that just feel so cheap. Fromsoft bosses are usually pretty tough, but you never really feel cheated. I encountered one boss that had basically no recovery time after its attacks, had insane reach, and had the good ol' Dark Souls 2 100% tracking on its attacks. Meaning that when it would do a big jumping attack, I'd roll behind it/to the side of where the attack should have landed, and instead the boss would do a mid-air 180%/complete change of direction and smash my face in with the attack. He also had another attack where he slashed twice, and the second slash was so fast after the first, that it'd catch you at the end of your roll from dodging the first slash. Boss just felt like a huge "fuck you" to the player, especially after it turned out that you can just stagger-lock the boss the entire fight with jumping attacks. :| Was not pleased with that boss. Felt like they over-tuned its difficulty, expecting players to cheese it like that.

I've seen bosses like those you're mentioning. The worst I've seen is one a streamer I follow has been on for almost the entire day called Malenia, Blade of Miquella which even he says is awfully done, and he's done all the Souls games at level 1 and Sekiro deathless with Kuro's charm so it's not like the guy isn't experienced with Souls bosses. She just has such long combo attacks where I don't get how you're supposed to avoid being hit when rolling clearly isn't going to give long enough i-frames to get through such a long attack, and the range is so far that you can't even roll away from the rest of it either.

I wonder if the game being so open and having so many options for combat may have caused some bosses to feel badly designed because they can't be as finely tailored to the players current status and progress like in the linear FromSoft games. I saw one boss that seemed practically tailored for long range magic and such and doing it with melee basically turned into a game of luck with RNG to not be buried by multiple attacks without a long enough window to attack back or pop a heal.

[Dragon Lord]

That's the issue with Elden Ring I've seen so far: Everything feels like it was made to be countered by a magic build. It honestly feels like you're being extremely punished for playing a non-magic build at a lot of points in this game. There are some areas in the game that have enemies that have insanely high physical DEF and your attacks actually bounce off of them as if you're hitting a shield, leaving you wide open for their counter. So you're forced to parry them (though if you miss the timing, good luck because they'll either one-shot you or put you right on death's door). Though even a riposte with a 140 crit dagger didn't even do half of their health, which is pretty insane. Magic builds would be able to go through the area and just drop everything in an instant. So yeah, I definitely don't like how tailored this game feels to magic builds over melee builds.

Another thing that I'm kinda madge about right now is that I can't find ANY DEX WEAPONS! Every weapon I find is either a quality weapon (split scaling between STR and DEX) or a pure STR weapon. Then to make things worse, of all the weapons I've found so far, only one can be made into Keen (which is the DEX scaling upgrade path) and those are Katanas. I can't even upgrade Curved Swords to Keen, when Curved Swords have generally been DEX weapons throughout the Souls games. So it feels even worse trying to do a DEX build in this game because so far I've literally been restricted to just Katanas for weapons if I want one that actually scales decently with my stats.

I am having fun with the Claw weapon though. It seems they did give this weapon a bit of buffing in this game. Two-handing it makes you have dual claws too , no need to find a second pair of them, and gives you a unique move-set. The bleed is really good on them and the damage is pretty good too, which is a huge change from the lackluster damage the Claws have done in past Souls games. The moveset with the dual claws actually reminds me a lot of Bloodborne, which is probably why I like it so much, haha. I kind of themed my character's armor around being "feral" as well to try and match the batshit crazy playstyle of the claws. I'll provide a screenshot later to show you what I mean, as I don't have time before work to do it now.

But yeah, I'm loving the game overall, but there's definitely some stuff that leaves me scratching my head. My biggest gripe with the game though, as I've mentioned before, is that it's Dark Souls 4. It's not even like what Bloodborne was -- a Souls game in nature, but completely different and its own unique thing at the same time -- Elden Ring is just straight up Dark Souls 4. Everything about it is the same as Dark Souls, just with an open world and a horse (with really bad horseback combat).

[Monocle]

I just needed to post in here because I needed everyone to know that I die. I die so bad. I die so good. I die so much. I die.

[Moonface]

I just needed to post in here because I needed everyone to know that I die. I die so bad. I die so good. I die so much. I die.

Have you been dying less as you progress or has it been kicking your arse consistently no matter where you go or how far you get?

[Monocle]

Have you been dying less as you progress or has it been kicking your arse consistently no matter where you go or how far you get?

nope! just stop consistently dying. Gary said I should already have +2 and +3 weapons and mine is still default! It's been fantastic not living all over the map. oh yeah

[Moonface]

Have you managed to kill any bosses yet at least?

[Monocle]

oh yeah I've looked a few of those mini bosses but not the story ones yet. not at all. I need better equipment

[Mr EliteL]

I'm with you, Monocle, I'm dying so many times. I've beaten only one "boss" so far and I mean the Pumpkin Head boss in a ruin that is a normal enemy later, which I already I found one of guarding a small castle with a bunch of soldiers that I had to retreat from. I have explored a bit and been fighting standard enemies, most of them weak some that have caused trouble but did win against. Didn't try fighting Tree Sentinel immediately but have trying just now against him, but to no avail and will level up a bit more before I try again. Got plenty to explore anyway. I do have a plan for Tree Sentinel but I keep screwing up.

EDIT: Done another minor boss, the wolf guy that was in a cave with wolves and finally Tree Sentinel. Got 'im! Had my solution all along, the mace I bought that hits harder than my Scimitars, so I'll consider using that more when on Torrent.

[Moonface]

To be fair @Mr EliteL I'd be impressed if you weren't dying a lot since this is your first Souls-style game. XD

How can you tell if a boss is a story boss in this game by the way? I'm curious how they made that distinction in an open world game.

[Dragon Lord]

Story bosses tend to have a cutscene when you enter the boss arena, while non-story bosses you just go in and fight the boss with nothing else.

One thing I do like a lot about Elden Ring is that there are some random bosses in the world that only spawn at night. Nice little touch to give some incentive to re-visit areas at night. Also provides for especially good "OH SHIT!" moments when you're exploring in the dark and all of a sudden the music changes and a health bar pops up, but you can't see where the boss is.

[ShiraNoMai]

What stat builds are you folk going for?

[Monocle]

I'm going against advice and got for Dex/Int build because I'm a masochist and I deserve to hurt so good. I randomly sprinkle in a little End so I can carry heavier shit

[ShiraNoMai]

Ooh, have you found any neat spells to use? Been watching someone do a mage build as their second run and it's been interesting.