Elden Ring and Shadow of the Erdtree expansion

[DDC]

Haven't finished it yet, but I've seen quite a bit and the crying about difficulty seems way overdone. I literally have not encountered any difficult dungeon segments during my entire playtime, and the overworld is even less of a threat. I continue to be very unimpressed with the dungeon design, which lags far behind other games in creativity and intricacy. Demon's Souls was alluded to above, and I really think getting blasted from the sky by stingrays or fighting rolling skeletons on narrow ledges or getting your face bitten off in the tower of latria is light years beyond anything on offer here. However, I did stumble onto a map section where it seems like the overworld itself is laid out like a large dungeon, and from running through it on the horse it looks like it will probably be the highlight of the game.

As for the bosses, I've seen most of them and there isn't anything yet that would be difficult with a summon and a decent build. For example, I stumbled onto what is supposed to be the second to last boss, very underleveled in terms of tree blessings, and still took it down to 25% HP first try without summons. If I had brought anything at all with me, whether gold NPC or spirit ashes, it would have been an easy first run kill. And the mimic tear can probably come close to soloing many bosses. So, assuming you have enough tree blessings, the difficulty is pretty similar to the tougher bosses in the base game: easy if you have a summon and know what you're doing, a good challenge if you have a powerful build but don't use spirit ashes, and almost impossible if you don't use a good build. The problem is that a lot of the "good builds" feel like cheese and aren't fun to play. I wish they would nerf the overpowered builds and weapons but also nerf the bosses a bit, so that the player has to actually learn the bosses to kill them. And spirit ashes never should have been in the game to begin with. I'd prefer that these bosses be tuned to where they could be killed 1v1 with normal attacks from a sword and board and a lot of dodging instead of just spamming specials at them in a DPS race. That said, a few of the bosses are awesome and I had a lot of fun putting in the time to kill them 1v1.

Otherwise, they did manage to correct many problems from the base game. For example, if you've upgraded your GPU since the base game came out and were worried it wouldn't stutter anymore, worry not because it still chugs even on a 4090. I know many players also complained that the base game did not have enough palette-swapped dragons to kill, and Erdtree really steps up in that regard. And if you didn't get your fill of soulless, empty areas to comb through trying to find morsels of decent content, the expansion delivers.

[maidenhaver]

Wasn't the biggest complaint from the base game the world was empty and the dungeons unremarkable? Why didn't they just make a big fun dungeon?

[Element]

they've struggled every time they tried to dip into the concept. first chalice dungeons, then the ****** ER ones.
They'd scrap the thought if they weren't as intent on padding out the experience.

[DDC]

Wasn't the biggest complaint from the base game the world was empty and the dungeons unremarkable? Why didn't they just make a big fun dungeon?

The biggest complaint was that too few of the chests had cookbooks for consumables you would never craft or use, so now there is a whole new tier of "pot" items with the associated loot and chests strewn across the world.

[maidenhaver]

Yeah, loot sucks in these games.

[DDC]

Decided to binge the rest of the game last night so I could take down the last boss everyone has been crying about before it gets nerfed. I am impressed. This is the best and hardest Souls game boss. Tried 5x before I went to bed and got it down to 15%, but that last part might be hard. Only the truly elite players will be able to beat this boss without using the most broken weapons and ashes. I went in the first time planning on an honorable battle, but as soon as I saw the HP pool I knew this was finally a foe worthy of taking off the gloves and going no-holds-barred (mimic tear and blasphemous blade). And it also pretty much requires fully exploring the game world and collecting all the blessings (and getting vigor to the high 50s minimum) because some attacks will otherwise be one-hit kills.

I have every other boss dead and overall this expansion was a good effort on the bosses, bad on the dungeons. They are all too short and offer very little opposition. There are only a couple of segments in the entire game where it is any challenge at all to get from one checkpoint to the next. A lot of places are bizarrely lacking in enemies, and tough enemies in particular. I highly recommend doing the NPC quests. Without spoilers, they're somewhat better than the norm for a Souls game and they do add to the experience.

[wndrbr]

I have every other boss dead and overall this expansion was a good effort on the bosses, bad on the dungeons. They are all too short and offer very little opposition. There are only a couple of segments in the entire game where it is any challenge at all to get from one checkpoint to the next. A lot of places are bizarrely lacking in enemies, and tough enemies in particular.

that's depressing.

[Xenich]

Why don't they just admit what they are doing. Get rid of the open world and put up a tree list of bosses that you progress through and call it Elder Kombat.

[rusty_shackleford]

how come every boss is basically identical in how it just slides around and can fly with giant jumping attacks?
do people find this fun?

[wndrbr]

Why don't they just admit what they are doing. Get rid of the open world and put up a tree list of bosses that you progress through and call it Elder Kombat.

they almost did exactly that with Sekiro. That game's locations and normal enemy encounters were so **** easy against your character's ninja moveset, only the bossfights provided challenge. Fromsoft even added the ability to replay bossfights with a patch.

[1998]

Why don't they just admit what they are doing. Get rid of the open world and put up a tree list of bosses that you progress through and call it Elder Kombat.

they almost did exactly that with Sekiro. That game's locations and normal enemy encounters were so **** easy against your character's ninja moveset, only the bossfights provided challenge. Fromsoft even added the ability to replay bossfights with a patch.

I thought that was the Souls-formula. Didn't even know there was supposed to be content outside boss fights.

[wndrbr]

Why don't they just admit what they are doing. Get rid of the open world and put up a tree list of bosses that you progress through and call it Elder Kombat.

they almost did exactly that with Sekiro. That game's locations and normal enemy encounters were so **** easy against your character's ninja moveset, only the bossfights provided challenge. Fromsoft even added the ability to replay bossfights with a patch.

I thought that was the Souls-formula. Didn't even know there was supposed to be content outside boss fights.

I always enjoyed the actual levels more than the bosses, and the bossfights were more of a capstone/thematic events that made you feel good that you just finished the area.

Fromsoft started to put more emphasis on bosses rather than the levels starting with Bloodborne and Dark Souls 3 - prior to that the levels were more challenging, had more environmental hazards, traps, ambush encounters, etc.

[DDC]

Why don't they just admit what they are doing. Get rid of the open world and put up a tree list of bosses that you progress through and call it Elder Kombat.

they almost did exactly that with Sekiro. That game's locations and normal enemy encounters were so **** easy against your character's ninja moveset, only the bossfights provided challenge. Fromsoft even added the ability to replay bossfights with a patch.

I thought that was the Souls-formula. Didn't even know there was supposed to be content outside boss fights.

Going back to Demons Souls, the levels themselves were the real obstacles. Large, labyrinthine areas with a lot of secrets and clever mechanics, often with enemies themed to the level that only appear there. **** like fighting fast, extremely damaging rolling skeletons on narrow bridges and ledges. The checkpoints were fairly spread out (in fact, Demons Souls treated them as separate numbered "levels"), your character was pretty limited in options to deal with enemies, and attrition of healing items could halt your progress if you made too many mistakes. If you died to the boss or an enemy deep into the level, you had to redo the whole level again to get back to your souls. The bosses generally were not that hard (and some were even gag bosses), but the fights were still very tense because the whole level had to be redone if you lost, and you would be leaving progressively more and more souls in the boss room each time you died.

[wndrbr]

classic video. Still rings true today, after all these years.

[Kitsune]

Going back to Demons Souls, the levels themselves were the real obstacles. Large, labyrinthine areas with a lot of secrets and clever mechanics, often with enemies themed to the level that only appear there. **** like fighting fast, extremely damaging rolling skeletons on narrow bridges and ledges. The checkpoints were fairly spread out (in fact, Demons Souls treated them as separate numbered "levels"), your character was pretty limited in options to deal with enemies, and attrition of healing items could halt your progress if you made too many mistakes. If you died to the boss or an enemy deep into the level, you had to redo the whole level again to get back to your souls. The bosses generally were not that hard (and some were even gag bosses), but the fights were still very tense because the whole level had to be redone if you lost, and you would be leaving progressively more and more souls in the boss room each time you died.

The original Demon's Souls was (atmosphere-wise) the best souls title ever imo. It really was the only world where I really bought the whole "apocalypse" thing.
Bloodborne came close, but locations like the Tower of Latria, Stonefang Tunnel and the Deprived Chasm are just on a whole different level.
That's not even a nostalgia thing for me, since I first played Demon's Souls on PC in 2020 with some texture mods and at 120fps. The remake is completely soulless (pardon the bad pun) though. Completely missed in the atmosphere department and basically looks like a playable tech demo with all the colourful particle vomit on screen.

[Element]

classic video. Still rings true today, after all these years.

makes me want to download rpcs3 again

[Xenich]

Why don't they just admit what they are doing. Get rid of the open world and put up a tree list of bosses that you progress through and call it Elder Kombat.

they almost did exactly that with Sekiro. That game's locations and normal enemy encounters were so **** easy against your character's ninja moveset, only the bossfights provided challenge. Fromsoft even added the ability to replay bossfights with a patch.

That was a thing I have been noticing about a lot of games, especially MMOs. Trash mobs used to be a part of the game play, not simply an excuse to hit buttons. Encounters used to be much longer and this provided a means for the NPCs to create numerous obstacles in the forms of strategy. With many games, the combat is so fast with non-boss mobs that NPCs become simply zombie fodder without depth in play and their only solution to increase difficulties is to zerg them with AOE mini-tower defense scenarios.

CC then becomes useless due to time limits, any NPC chain setup behaviors can't be implemented, again, due to them dying so quickly and then this forces them to design the players skills around spamming AOE abilities constantly. So even if their are multiple classes the player can select from, they are essentially all the same "AOE" fast kill skills, spells, abilities. All of the utility and unique elements in many past games are gone resulting in a 3 button mash fest for everything accept the boss fight which becomes a "dance" game of spamming the same limited skills.

I noticed this with DDO where there used to be longer fights, fewer mobs, but more difficult and you had to apply various tactics to overcome various stages of the dungeons. Now it is mostly a spam AOE fest with every encounter being a rush of 10-15 mobs.

It isn't a surprise though, if you listened to the bulk of the mainstream base back when there used to be this concept of play (EQ, WoW, DDO, Rift, etc...) all they did was whine and complain about wasting time on trash mobs and how fights took too long. Now all they do is zerg the dungeons 500 times over and over with easy fast kill fights collecting tokens to buy useless cosmetic items so they can sit around in public areas larping their *** fantasies.

[Finarfin]

Is it possible to use rpcsx to play bloodborne 60fps without any problems? I have a ps5 but I don't want sub 30fps on a game like that.

[Element]

Is it possible to use rpcsx to play bloodborne 60fps without any problems? I have a ps5 but I don't want sub 30fps on a game like that.

No

[maidenhaver]

Banjo Kazooie had better levels lol

[Zothique]

So, is Miquella a ******? I'm confused.

[DDC]

Effeminate ****** would be more accurate.

[Vergil]

Just learned it's 40 bucks you're a sissified bimbofied little **** slave sub scum if you pay that price for a ******* DLC

[DDC]

The expansion takes about 40 hours to explore thoroughly without being an anal "completionist." So while it doesn't provide the insane "value" of the base game, the price isn't terrible either.

[rusty_shackleford]

40 hours of walking through empty zones to fight bosses that fly around in circles

[wndrbr]

https://www.theguardian.com/games/artic ... a-miyazaki

“Before and after Elden ring, there’s going to be a clear difference … you could see that in Armored Core VI, I would say. Where FromSoftware is right now, in terms of scale, I would say Elden Ring is really the limit. We’ve tapped every resource and talent that we have access to … scaling it even bigger, I’d have my concerns. Perhaps having multiple projects is the next stage, where some of the other younger talent can have the opportunity to manage and direct game design for a smaller project.”

no more giga-huge open world projects.

[Finarfin]

https://www.theguardian.com/games/artic ... a-miyazaki

“Before and after Elden ring, there’s going to be a clear difference … you could see that in Armored Core VI, I would say. Where FromSoftware is right now, in terms of scale, I would say Elden Ring is really the limit. We’ve tapped every resource and talent that we have access to … scaling it even bigger, I’d have my concerns. Perhaps having multiple projects is the next stage, where some of the other younger talent can have the opportunity to manage and direct game design for a smaller project.”

no more giga-huge open world projects.

I just hope that the next game has better cooperative play. Elden Ring really sucks *** in that department and modders did a better job with the seamless coop mod.

[wndrbr]

Souls games weren't meant to be actual coop-focused games, cooperative play was just a minor thing you were able to do. One of the things i liked about souls coop is that you were only able to interact with complete strangers, all while not being able to use mic/chat, and only for short sections of game.

Of course it was one of the first things Fromsoft decided to casualize - first by adding an engraved ring which made it easier for players to connect with friends, and then by adding the actual password system. Lame!

[rusty_shackleford]

miyazaki expected people to use every advantage available and is probably confused by people who think using things like mimic tear are cheating
someone post the interview

[Oyster Sauce]

miyazaki expected people to use every advantage available and is probably confused by people who think using things like mimic tear are cheating
someone post the interview

95% of Dark Souls players will say things like "using shields is cheating!" while using a wiki to find the BiS armor and weapons for their character they made using a build guide with no deviation.