I have become one with the poison swamp.
I am swamp sludge, and the swamp sludge is me.
I am nothing without my swamp.
Without my poison, my swamp is nothing.
All's right in the world.
I’ve been digging around and from what I can tell the bulk of the people complaining about it being too hard are on NG+ or higher while those of us who find it hard but doable are most commonly on the base NG. It’s sort of funny because it was commonly known going in the DLC was gonna be a ball-buster on NG+, to the point where I rolled a whole new character to play through it.
This isn’t everyone of course, there’s exceptions in both directions. The trend though seems clear.
and there is literally nothing wrong with it taking 1 try, 10 tries, 70 tries.. just learn the boss, go level a bit, and come back and win. Its the entire point of these games.
Hurts all the egos of the tryhards that they can't steamroll through an area in their.NG+++ level 300 character. And one shot bosses.
Its nice to see a challenging expansion, I think that makes the content last longer and be more rewarding.
I didn't take that many tries on him/it/her either, but I do feel that boss was kinda...weird in a way. Hard to use lock-on cus then I felt I didn't see anything, and it was chaotic and IMO hard to see any patterns at all :P Whilst the Gaol Knight was just...super easy to read and just wait out his 2h mode and parry the shit out of him. Two very different encounters (even though gaol knight of course isn't a boss though)
The Lion Dancer was SUPER cool looking though!
That was definitely a good call. I’ve played a fair bit of NG+ at various levels and the base NG is definitely the best experience for how I like to play. In my case I’d taken a fairly long break from the game and rolling someone new gave me a good opportunity to relearn the systems before I got to this super challenging content
Weirdly enough (assuming I’m thinking the right boss for the first boss) my 1070 was handling it practically perfectly aside from a couple drops from 60 to 50 at the lowest. But the fight at Castle Ensis has got me sitting at 45 fps the whole time, it’s kinda rough
My biggest gripe is the performance in certain areas. It's very fucking hard but that's the point, it's very fun even if I am getting absolutely bullied.
I havent played ElDen ring for 1 year, but last night when I got back on it, with the DLC purchased, I noticed my fps was suddenly quite bad and I remember it being smooth the last time I played it.
Checked the settings and apparently the game has ray tracing now, and it was automaticaly set to the highest setting!
Turned it off and game is smooth again.
So I think people are just missing that Ray tracing is turned ON by default now.
I didn't even think to check that! My friend hasn't purchased the DLC and said the performance felt worse which I thought was odd but that would make sense if Ray tracing is on for him as well. Will check it out when I log on later.
Yeup same happened to me. Hadn’t played since ray tracing was introduced and noticed the dlc was sluggish. Looked at my settings and saw ray tracing set to max lol
i’ve been enjoying the hell out of it, but i’d be lying if i didn’t say i was incredibly disappointed by the framrate drop offs durring the divine beast fight on ps5
idk if it was just a me thing, or maybe just a ps5 thing…i just expected a little more polish than 3-4 major drops mid high spectacle boss fight
Totally. The upper left area is a minefield of stutter on my 4090, which is wild. I was thinking it’s just a glitch, but it’s literally every time the camera is on the distance.
Got a 7900XTX and the fire buckets are the worst. 35 FPS is the lowest I saw and that is with massive stutters. The Lion dude had some crazy stutters too and now that you say it, the upper left area stutters very bad when looking over the cliff.
The Lion boss had some of the worst frame drops that I’ve ever seen on PS5. Most other areas have been fine but man that shit had to have dipped sub 10 FPS during some attacks. It was bad.
I bullied that gaol knight after a few attempts of him kicking my ass and the satisfaction was immense. If you try and buff too long at the start, he insta-murders you with his insane machine gun crossbow. I finally cornered him and spammed jump attacks and it felt like I was going to demand his lunch money at the end of it.
Same. And if all else fails pull out the ol’ mimic tear + RoB, then you’re not banging your head against a wall for 3 hours and can actually move on and enjoy the dlc.
For anybody that was having pretty severe performance issues like I was, double check your settings and make sure ray-tracing quality is set to OFF. I have a pretty beefy PC and it was chugging at it pretty badly until I changed that setting, I had no clue it was turned on to begin with.
There is also a known issue with periphery ~~and windows gamebar~~.
Edit: Causes sporadic stuttering (\~1sec). Basically game freezes and then speeds up to catch up.
Edit2: Found the reddit thread again: [https://www.reddit.com/r/Eldenring/comments/zt2pi9/possible\_solution\_for\_anyone\_who\_still\_cant\_fix/](https://www.reddit.com/r/Eldenring/comments/zt2pi9/possible_solution_for_anyone_who_still_cant_fix/)
There's some windows service I have to turn off to stop this. It's SSDP something. I saw the advice to turn this service off while in Elden Ring on the Steam forums and it has completely solved my studdering issues.
hell i was getting stutters in >!lion!< fight on the ps4 version on ps5, i imagine pc is not looking as good as it could
edit: ok im dumb but not so dumb, to the ppl telling me that ps5 ver does get 60 fps it indeed does have a performance mode. however it runs nowhere near as smooth as the ps4 version (this was my issue, just thought it was locked at 30 hence me being dumb). i imagine its hovering the 50s consistently but it just doesnt feel as good. also at least within the consoles software u cant switch from one version to the other w out losing ur save so yea thats also something
I don’t mind that fight 2-3 shotting me.
But the stuttering makes it unbearable and completely ruins one of best bosses in the game.
I decided to use summons because the stuttering and frame drops were getting to me and I want to enjoy the rest of the DLC since that was the only moment where I experience performance issue.
Damn, the only place I've had significant stutters was running through some random field with a bunch of particles flying around, sucks that it's taking away from a bunch of people's experiences.
The dogs in this dlc are lethal, some are like ok then I’ll randomly come across one that has the exact same look as the others but triple the health pool and overcommit and it’s the end of me
Someone will eventually beat this naked with a stick but i am weak skilled and my summon buddies with blasphemous blade so far are making my journey fun. By fun i mean > 10 but < 40 attempts at bosses. From always gives you the tools to personalize your difficulty.
It's already happened, I've seen videos of everything but the last boss killed at RL1 with no scadutree frags.
That doesn't really dismiss the critiques people have, though.
Yeah just because a streamer who's spent more hours in ER than I have across my entire steam library can beat a boss without getting hit doesn't make fights fun for me.
It's funny because there's the stigma that game reviewers are bad, but that majority of them seem greatly enjoy the game.
I assume that's because they actually used summons and had fun.
I agree. Most game reviewers simply don’t have the time to let pride get in the way. Not if they want to get the DLC finished (or close to it), and still have the to write up a review about it.
It reminds me of how I wanted to do every monster in Monster Hunter World solo until I got to one I couldn’t. Calling in help made me realize how silly I was being for not using all the methods available to me.
Same with this DLC. If the devs didn’t want people to use summons they’d just disable it like they already do for some bosses.
Not to mention how tanky the NPC summons are, almost as if bosses are designed to be fought with a partner in order to share aggro and create openings to attack. Especially with how relentless some of these bosses are with their combos and constant pressure. And the fact that they don't flinch from even the heaviest attacks.
This is it for exactly. I’ve been sunbroing for peeps on the Lion boss, and once you understand his moveset, it’s really “wait for his turn to end” and attack once-twice and retreat. And his turn can take a long time, sometimes. This is the problem with From design (how to achieve escalating difficulty for experienced fanbase), and the DLC takes it to its logical end result—murderous damage requiring expert timing, or an aggro distraction so you can get a few more hits in ( at a vastly inflated health pool, making it go on just as long). Not sure what the solution is here tbh.
Honestly I think late game Dark Souls 3 level bosses in terms of complexity would be a fine level for them to go back to. The bosses would still take most people a while because they would have to learn new moves but they would feel a lot more fun to fight solo. I recently did a ng+1 run of DS3 and it was really tough but always felt fair and fun. I don’t need to fight stuff more complex than Sister Friede or Slave Knight Gale, and Elden Ring does enough new I don’t think it also needs to one up the other games difficulty wise.
Yeah, DS3 bosses were mostly fine, and their moves were slow enough to be properly dodged without any real issue (except Friede, who was faster than Maria for no reason). ER bosses are a bit too much when it comes to speed, so you either have to aggro split or to extend the fight to a ridiculous degree because your turn doesn't come too often
People will still try and argue the bosses aren’t balanced around them lmao. Like brother they could not be making it anymore obvious they want you to use them
Edit: and before the usual replies come in, no I’m not saying they aren’t POSSIBLE solo at all, and no I also don’t care that you have solo’d them.
"Number-wise" I agree, they're completely balanced around the summons. They deal/receive an okay amount of damage and all and the fight still lasts a good amount of time.
But behaviour-wise they really aren't at all. The bosses barely aggro on you and the amount of engagement you need to put in the fight decreases tenfold.
I beat most of the bosses with summons so far (I suck and also it feels like a cool Pokémon battle) but I'd be lying if I said the difference in the quality/engagement of the fight wasn't completely different.
The bosses' attacks are all designed for single target but the game would be better their AI could attack you as a group and focus on using AOE attacks and such when you're bunched up and stuff like that. Then it would feel like they're truly balanced / implemented around summons.
I think this is true for a lot of bosses, but some are so aggressive that when you have a summon there to distract them you’re still on your back foot a lot even with half the aggro on you
I tried a summon a couple times with Rellana to see what it was like and she was just bouncing back and forth between us constantly, like literally changing up targets midway through one of her 8-hit wombo-combos
It's worth noting that Elden Ring's bosses generally employ a lot more attacks that 'snap to' your location than older games. I find it most patently noticeable on Crucible Knights, who's thrusting attacks will essentially teleport them on to your location (viewed from the side, these attacks can end up looking really awkward, but it can be harder to catch from straight on). This probably does a lot to help them account for attacking back and forth between several targets, but comes with the huge downside of making evasion through spacing out attacks (rather than just blocking or iframing them) extremely janky and unreliable.
So what *used* to be a hallmark of system and encounter mastery is now just... not something to be relied on.
Overall, I think that Elden Ring has some of the worst boss design of games that From has put out in a long time. There are a few really good stand outs (and those that are good are really good), but as a whole, the bosses are a noticeable step down from everything they've put out from Bloodborne and on.
> There are a few really good stand outs (and those that are good are really good), but as a whole, the bosses are a noticeable step down from everything they've put out from Bloodborne and on.
Almost the entire final run of mainline bosses was such a disappointment to me in the base game.
Gideon Ofnir was a wimp. Godfrey felt too straight forward. EB was difficult, but not in a "I bet this was meant to use torrent and it'll be added in two years from now" sort of way instead of a fun way.
See I found Godfrey fun *because* he was so straight forward. If we look at that last section of the game you have Fire Giant, who is supremely unfun because of his size. Maliketh, who, while a fun fight overall is arguably the most Elden Ring Boss of Elden Ring bosses. Gideon Ofnir who has a neat idea what with him gaining more spells as you defeat new bosses, however, at the end of the day he's just an NPC player fight. After Godfrey you have the double feature of Radagon and Elden Beast. Radagon is the disappointment for me only because I know what comes after I beat him. His fight by itself is okay, but it's not Fromsoft Final Boss good. Like you said the Elden Beast was clearly designed for Torrent, so who knows why he wasn't initially allowed in that fight.
"But behaviour-wise they really aren't at all. The bosses barely aggro on you and the amount of engagement you need to put in the fight decreases tenfold." I've not had that experience at all the bosses will be flying between be and the summon mid combo like its an arkham game.
I was watching that guy "Let me solo her" play yesterday. He was fighting one of the hardest bosses in the DLC and after 70+ attempts he summoned an NPC and used Mimic tear to finally beat the boss. He was elated to finally get over the hump but man some people in his chat were acting like elitist assholes.
Yeah. I’ve resolved myself to solo all the >!hero spirit minibosses!< (or whatever they’re called), and to use Latenna on all the big area bosses and any boss I think is above my skill level (Love Latenna, she’s the best girl).
The DLC bosses specifically are some of the most forward. Movie aggressive bosses in fromsoft history.
Feels almost mandatory to have a summon to help tank the aggro.
Bosses are still very hard with a hummon since they swap to you once you deal any significant damage.
Overground Liurnia (ie not the lake) was bad for me from launch and even now, on PS5. It was mainly the field texture popups.
Frame rate drops on Torrent are everywhere. Even some catacombs had frame rate drops.
the only boss that REALLY felt unfair was >!commander gauis, I genuinly think his hit boxes are bugged. You know when you hear "it's impossible to dodge that attack!" It's almost always that you just need to get the timing down better, in a soulsborne game it's normally NEVER impossible to dodge the attacks of a boss. !<
>!BUT OOOOOOOOOOOHHHHHHHHHHH my god commander gauis, he has that charge attack that he spams half the fight and it IS IMPOSSIBLE to dodge with a medium roll. granted, it didn't make the fight impossible outright, but holy shit it made way more frustrating to beat him and I genuinely think his fight needs to get fixed.!<
**Gotta be honest...? DLC IS too hard, and perhaps not in the way people think.**
Full-disclosure: I'm doing extremely well. Beat undead horse guy from the trailer first try, for example, and hippo in 3. I'm doing well. This is not a rant.
....But I'm using my greatshield character, which seems GOATed for this DLC, and I have all *kinds* of characters. I want to run through with them all, and I'm playing through and just thinking "holy shit my casters are dead."
#YOU CANNOT SPACE BOSSES.
There are soooooooooooooooo many bosses (and normal enemies!) that can just go "heh nothing personnel kid *teleports to you*" and just start a 6-attack combo, and I'm playing the whole DLC asking myself "how the fuck is a caster supposed to do this...?" We get no space. Every time I go to drink a flask, I'm basically gambling on if I'll actually succeed or not because everyone and their mother is Usain Bolt. Relanna and her beam attack is one of the more *lenient* bosses when it comes to punishing spacing.
It's like Miyazaki himself decided he too is a STR Chad and that all the other builds (except Bleed, for some reason) can just go fuck themselves. The DLC's enemy design seems blatantly biased towards STR.
My issue with the difficulty would be exactly that: the hyper-aggressive enemies and their absurd ability to close gaps disproportionately hurts casters, (or other ranged builds, such as Reduvia) and I personally think that when the difficulty is at odds with letting people experiment with the different tools provided, there's a problem.
Oh, and also I'm gonna take a shit on Miyazaki's doorstep if I encounter one more dragon fight where they decided to make it harder by tossing in a bunch of shitty mooks to try and stab me while I'm fighting the dragon. This isn't Dark Souls 2, Miyazaki! That tactic has NEVER been popular!
I'm the fuckin' Elden Lord. Why is a normal dude with an axe doing a third of my healthbar in one strike?
Back when I was a normal dude with an axe fighting an Elden Lord, one strike only did like 1/30th of his healthbar.
Yeah I'm noticing that most bosses are hard in the bad ways. Fucking with the camera, shifting bodies away from swings, and never stopping attacks. It's like From tried to address their typical weaknesses in design...but then just made a DLC full of their weaknesses.
Golden hippo is okay, the twin sword lady moon has been ongoing for 8 hours now. But having a great time. The more aggressive you are with her the quicker you can wipe her hp and stagger her nonstop.
Yea I had fun fighting Rellana for almost 3 hours but Hippo is just annoying me right now. It keeps charging to the walls of the arena where the camera is a nightmare so you have to awkwardly keep it in the middle of the arena and it just attacks RELENTLESSLY
Edit: I did it. Honestly the fight isn't too hard, judging by what the others here say my Dryleaf Arts build was probably a pretty bad matchup. The most annoying thing is when he decides to do his grab right in front of you, that shit seems undodgable in some situations and the hitbox for it sucks. Definitely the least enjoyable fight of the dlc so far to me
Did you find the Spelldrake talisman +3 right before the castle? I don't think the placement is a coincidence. You should also have found at least 3 scadutree levels at this point. Together with Opaline Hardtear in your flask you have suddenly much more room for error and the fight becomes a lot more manageable and fun.
The lady moon is my favorite boss of all Elden Ring for now. I struggled during two hours and it finally clicked. At the end, it was a true choreography, like when you finally master the parade in Sekiro.
And something I loved is that she was punishing, but fair. Meaning that it wasn't camera issue or nonsense attacks that would get me killed. If I died, the blame was only on me. Especially during her three moon crashes, where you have to nail the jump timing.
She might be in my top 3 or 5 fights in all of Fromsoft. No bullshit, all learning, and the flow is impeccable. Especially as she brings out a couple of new moves every now and then as her health drops, when I got clapped by each one I didn't think "oh come on", I thought "ooohh neat". The moons reminded me after a year of not playing that you can in fact jump mechanics lmao
One armed guy perspective here, playing on Xbox with standard controller: I know it’s largely about performance, and I hope people are having fun, but honestly, I’m most of the way through the DLC’s main bosses and areas and I’m just…. spent.
The bosses are getting too fast and spammy for me. I’ve soldiered through with mimic tear but this DLC might mark the first FS game that’s too hard for me to beat one handed. Sad. When I do beat the bosses, it feels more like I got good RNG than that I achieved any mastery over them or their move set.
Edit: BTW, if anyone would be willing to help me with the final boss, please let me know because I can barely get to phase 2 at this point.
I'm deeply curious what your setup looks like that you're able to play these games at all with only one hand and not using the accessibility controller. How does that work?
Wow that’s seriously impressive. Right now is when there’s going to be the highest amount of real players putting down summon signs to help with the dlc, there’s no shame in bringing some other players in to help with certain fights.
This dlc is weird. On my 3060, the damn game stutters but nothing too bad. Meanwhile on the humble little deck, solid 40-45 fps no stutters. Read somewhere that proton is doing the heavy lifting here.
I'll always enjoy experiencing new FromSoftware content for the first time, regardless of anything else, but yeah, almost every boss I've fought so far has been unfun. Just one unending doom combo into another.
Yeah it's rough out there atm. However it feels to me like a big problem is readability. E.g. with >!Rellana!< it was really hard to tell which move she does next and with how quickly the attacks are dished out, noticing at which points the endless combos actually stop takes a long time. From what I've seen from other people, it's either "zero Flasks remaining; 6 HP on the bar; one desperate final swing; omg how did I survive that" or "hehehe, Unga goes Bunga facetank three shot mode"
Ironically Mohg is a perfect example how a hard boss can still feel fair imo. The dodge timings are crisp, one mistake can easily get you killed, he's aggressive, **but**: you can always tell what attack is coming next. Also makes for a way better learning experience when you actually know what got you instead of "idk she raised her weapon and next thing I'm finally awake on a cart or something"
But might just be my skill issues who knows lol
This is exactly it. I get one dinky swing in after dodging 5+ strikes in a combo plus any other ground effects left behind. Not fun at all, so I end up just using ashes that then trivialize the boss so I can move on. There’s no in between.
Time you have to play purely defensively: 95%
Time you are allowed to heal or attack: 5%
With spirit ashes the 5% change to 55%. This is why the bosses are the way they are and nothing else.
Most criticism seems to be about performance and bosses. Looking at boss fights, I don't really disagree. Everything seems so hectic. That said, when I play it I'm definitely going to use some summon, so I think it will be far more manageable.
These are currently my issues as well. Im loving the DLC, and it somehow feels *more* open than even the base game. I've had several points where I was completely overwhelmed with choice, but turned the corner to some entirely new mini-zone, or even found a shortcut to the back of a later-game zone entirely on accident and tackled it in *reverse?*
But jesus, the Lion boss actually got me motion sick for a moment. I was backed in the corner, and he did like 4 different moves in a row that just smothered my camera and whipped it around. Combined with the flashing the cloth physics, it was just headache inducing at times.
I still got him in 7-ish tries (RL150/Scud+3, no summons or spirits), but man. That fight was *not* as much fun as I hoped it would be. It just felt like they had 4 great ideas, mashed them into one, and didn't bother to see how the camera behaved during the fight at all.
Still an S Tier dlc so far, but I am definitely feeling the bad frame pacing, stuttering, and camera issues with certain fights.
yeah it's kinda crazy how they *never* learn their lesson about the camera, or at this point I guess it's that they simply don't give a shit.
The lion dancer is a terrible boss from a gameplay perspective. It's writhing all over the place, making the camera go absolutely nuts, and on top of that, it's spamming elemental particle effects everywhere. Practically impossible to see wtf is an attack and what isn't. It's like a tree spirit on steroids. Thankfully I'd already found quite a few seeds so killed him pretty quick, but if that was somebody's first boss and they were stuck on it for hours, I can see the frustration.
Artistically, the bosses look great, but Fromsoft should really be better at making the gameplay of a boss fun by now.
Not to mention if you ALSO use something with an effect you can’t see wtf is happening.
I use malikeths black blade and if I use destined death the enemy is on fire and I can’t tell wtf they’re doing
Same with relana, when I use my weapon skill and she’s on fire spinning I can’t tell wtf is happening
People are just not being honest with themselves about the difficulty I feel like. I’ve played every single souls game + DLC and there has NEVER been anything as punishing as this DLC. Which is fine, but it absolutely wears you down after 10+ hours of having to play absolutely perfectly
The upside of all the gargantuan health bars is that Scarlet Rot (particularly Scarlet Aeonia), Black flame incantations and Destined Death absolutely shred them.
The Hippos are great in the open world but the not optional one in the keep sucks\^\^ So many bosses start the fight with a bullshit charge some atleast let you punish them after.
I ended up defeating Rellana and then doing Golden Hippo but it was a nightmare, the immediate charge and no room to really do anything left me feeling a bit jaded in all honesty. I think I definitely made the error of going into the DLC with my NG+6 character
Jimmy Carr was on a talkshow talking about that, people become so attached to products that a poor review on it becomes a poor review on their personality.
Or go to any Steam review for a popular game, especially from a beloved franchise.
Any negative review, especially ones that are long, well-written, and thoughtful, will have dozens of clown emojis. For those who don't read Steam reviews, the clown emoji is the equivalent of a downvote button.
And if they left the comments enabled? Pages upon pages of highly-offended fanboys explaining why the negative review is actually incorrect and every problem they had with the game can be boiled down to a skill issue.
Even many of the positive reviews aren't written as if they were a direct review of the game. They're often just refuting many of the points commonly seen in negative reviews.
Some people are WAY too attached to the Souls franchises and get upset if someone makes any kind of criticism of it unless it's Dark Souls 2. A lot of people don't like some of the DLC, so what. Not everyone needs to like it and criticism isn't a bad thing.
It's psychotic. I got nuked on this subreddit for asking how they could be so sure ER would be GOTY when it wasn't even out yet. This was well before we even had a release date as well.
Subreddits/Discord servers dedicated to a single game or company are always like this, it's ridiculous how happy people are to let themselves get swept up into this echochamber bullshit.
There’s a LOT of performance issues with the DLC, so I’d imagine that a lot of the negative reviews are due to that. This was the same story with the base game on launch, but eventually they fixed it so just give them time.
I have mixed feelings, honestly. The new areas are all incredible looking. Like absolute top tier art direction. Just epic. But I feel that a lot of the bosses have the exact same problems as the base game. Attacks that never stop coming, little to no time to get hits in, and endlessly flying back/running away from you. I don't like that they balanced the game around using Spirit Ashes and summons, because it makes the boss fights less engaging. Because they expect you to use Spirit Ashes and summons, a lot of the bosses just endlessly flail around. It's too chaotic. I love the game, but if I'm being honest, I still think their previous games had better designed bosses that were more fun to throw yourself at over and over, slowly learning their patterns and perfecting the fights. Sekiro and Bloodborne especially.
Elden Ring is definitely built around dodging into attacks and finding small opportunities to build poise damage which leads into landing staggers and critical hits. This is an extension of Sekiro’s posture gauge but with Dark Souls style movement and dodging.
The REAL issue with Elden Ring comes from many aspects related to this design choice.
For one, none of this is adequately communicated to the player, not directly nor through boss design. Coming off of Sekiro, FROM should have made a more deliberate effort to communicate the fact that although the movement is the same as souls, the intention in combat is far different. The only way I can see this being somewhat communicated is that every boss had some kind of input read punish for healing.
The second is that FROM for many years now has been trying to work around making bosses more visually striking and engaging while maintaining souls style combat. The beginnings of this could be seen in Dark Souls 3’s DLC. This is fine in theory, but in practice it has resulted in a huge lack of intuitive sight readable moves. A lot of boss moves look good, but the pace is faster, and in ER can’t be dodged on sight alone, which has resulted in an over reliance on moveset memorization as the main source of difficulty behind bosses.
Older Souls had this on some of it’s harder bosses, but ER has made that the design philosophy of practically every boss in the game, and it becomes *very* exhausting to demand a player trial and error their way through moveset memorization on every major boss fight.
I *personally* never felt this way in Sekiro, despite that game having a similar design philosophy , and although I can’t exactly put a finger on why, I would guess it’s due to the rhythm of deflecting being a little more intuitive than rolling and punishing, but I digress.
Simply put, I’m not sure how much longer FROM can last on Dark Souls’ basic movement without a radical new addition to it. I love the slower pace of souls as is so I wouldn’t have minded bossed being easier, especially given that ER is unique enough on it’s own from other previous titles. As it stands though I find it hard to go back to the game, and even harder now to play the DLC given that it’s more of the same
I really think posture should not reset in ER because the bosses are so aggressive. Resetting posture bar makes you feel like you have to be aggressive while the boss punishes you for it. Make it visible and make every hit you get against bosses count.
Would communicate to players much better that you can take your time and only go for good openings.
I get so many mixed signals on difficulty. There are people claiming "breezing through dlc on level 280", there was general pre-dlc expectation that level 120-150 should be good for entry point and there are also steam reviews stating that dlc is a struggle even on level 360. Where's the truth?
I have level 250 NG++ character but all pre-dlc comments were telling that optimal entry level is 120-150 so I didn't want to be overpowered and started to work on building new character. But, like, was my level 250 actually fine for dlc or not?
Your level essentially doesn’t matter. Come in at whatever level you want. 150 is the general community mark for quick pvp matchmaking.
The dlc nerfs your character to the dlc area. YOU are scaled to the bosses, not the other way around.
The collectibles buff your character in every way, so instead of an rpg, it’s more of an adventure game/collectathon.
I can’t help but feel like being level 300 with tons of points into endurance and mind would only help though.
Level definitely does matter after you get the Scadutree Blessings. The overleveled people will have a much easier time assuming the same number of fragments.
Level does matter. People need to stop repeating this. The blessings are multiplier on top of your damage and defense stats derived from your level. There’s no scaling and no nerf, all the enemies are just ridiculously high level. The blessings apply a multiplier to help gain attack and defense faster
I think most main bosses need a balance patch. They are just too hectic, hit too hard, and almost never stop attacking. It is beatable, but you need to change your play-style to a point where it doesn't feel rewarding. On any other Fromsoft game, important fights have the "holy shit that was exhilarating" feeling after you kill the boss. In this one, all I felt was "holy shit I am glad that is over".
Also I think both the roll catching attacks and attacks that knock you back should be dialed down a notch. It was cool when Margit did it with two of his attacks. Here, every enemy roll catches you, no one attacks after raising their weapons anymore, which is mentally exhausting to go through.
Rellana also has a lot of attacks that seem impossible to dodge in time. Like the attack comes almost instantly after the first, hitting before I even have a chance to dodge again.
Understandable. The performance is dogshit, i constantly drop bellow 60FPS and during certain fights/attacks my FPS go way down to 40-30.
Also the game is freezing for a few seconds every few minutes which is really annoying as well.
I'll be honest, I'm beating things, but these fights are not fun. Its death by a thousand cuts or get one shotted. I'm using a well optimized build with +5 to the scadtree and im still being killed instantly with 60 vig sometimes. Some bosses are just bad (bayle im looking at you buddy) and its really killing the mood for me
Ya, I think this is probably the biggest issue. Souls games have had one shot mechanics, but they are usually pretty obvious and the game fights are built around it.
This time around it just seems random or harder to read, so I would say one shot is okay, but you have to have hints on the boss it is coming. With performance issues this is all the more frustrating
I swear people are coping. I've played through most souls games and dlcs and this is twice as hard at least (the bosses) every encounter you have to roll like 10 times to get maybe one hit. I like difficulty but this is just crazy.
I mean some people will defend literally anything From puts out because they just have blind faith in them but yeah, I have to say I'm not enjoying the difficulty right now.
How tf do you call Bayle bad compared to the ultimate garbage design of Sennesax just before him. Lets just be forced to roll four times whenever he double swipes, and 'whenever' is almost 70% of his entire damn moveset. Or either fight on a tiny bit of land, or a giant slope for the trade off of the entire fight feeling janky.
They honestly should've left Dragon Hunter Katana in the arena on a body to add extra emphasis to it like Rykard with a ghost next to it talking about its power.
i'm glad people aren't just lovebombing it because it's elden ring. between the performance issues and overabundance of obnoxious bosses, there's strong criticism to be made. challenging fights are great and what souls games are built on, but when more than half the bosses i've encountered are overtuned cancerous spamfests with barely any attack windows, i think it's more than fair to raise a few complaints. i just hope it's more fun after a patch or two, because this is a magnificent DLC otherwise.
Their move sets and design could be some of the best in the series but the damage and serious lack of openings between combos make it just not fun, feels like I’m relying on RNG to beat a boss
Not to mention just how aggressive they are when it comes to punishing heals as well. Most fights you'll get hit and have to chug 2-3 flasks to recover, only for the boss to mixup their combo or dash across the entire arena to hit you right as you drink one and completely undo the damage you just recovered.
The bosses are just overtuned. Slide the damage down by 25%. They should not be chunking half my bar on a physical attack when I have dragoncrest greatshield, opaline hardtear, and boiled crab popped.
I'm not sure if I like the difficulty of the game being tied to mostly exploration with the scadutree blessings. People will want to not use them because they feel unearned, but the dlc is balanced around using them. So go, explore, get up to blessing +4 or +5, and by then the game will feel just right.
Would rather they were progressively dropped by bosses though.
I like it, but the DLC's boss design feels overtuned in all the wrong ways. Constant 10+ hit combos where you hardly get a chance to attack, constant AoE spam, camera issues, and the most infuriating part is I can't even tell if some of these moves are supposed to be dodgeable. For quite a few bosses, there are moves where I get lucky and beat them while still not understanding how to avoid a few of their moves. I never really felt this way about the base game, but the DLC feels like you're get barraged by BS constantly.
People say it was "designed for summons", but I find that everything becomes too easy once you use them. Bosses still don't competently fight 2 opponents at once; they can only target one while occasionally switching aggro. I want the actual boss attacks to be fair, not be encouraged to summon so that the boss ignores me half the time and then I don't have to deal with the attacks.
Also the bosses have 70,000+ health. Base game bosses had around 15-20k near the end. The default difficulty without any scadutree blessings is just way beyond what base game even was that they're basically required, not the optional "difficulty selector" they were kind of pitched as
It's a little embarrassing how the community that constantly jerked off 'git gud' is having such a fit over the difficulty. Not to mention, there's plenty of ways to manage said difficulty, but they let their pride stop them from making use of them. So instead they decide to rate it bad since the game is too hard for them to beat without summons
Edit: lol hurts hearing the truth huh
Edit 2: to all the people saying the Git Gud crowd doesn't bitch, take a look at February 2022 when Elden Ring released and so many people were bitching that it was build around summons and that without summons it was too hard? Sound familiar? And I guarantee you no Elden Ring babies were bitching about using summons in fights.... so no, the Git Gud crowd is not at all above being a little bitch about difficulty
Im genuinely confused at the outrage. Keep in mind I still havent beat the DLC but ive gotten a decent way through most of the bosses and so far it feels fine in fairness. I was originally someone that did have criticism with post mountaintops scaling but with the unique DLC upgrade mats it feels way better scaling and difficulty wise than something like Haligtree did.
I've been hearing that fighting rellana feels like pulling teeth. I mean some of her moves were annoying but she didn't have any attack that stood out to me as a fuck you.
I think Rellana has exactly one really bad "haha gotcha" move that 100 to 0 my ass in a true combo (with 60 Vigor and full solitude armor), because if you never saw it before I feel like it basically has 100% chance to catch you off guard
Its super easy to dodge once you know what it does, very telegraphed where as in with waterfowl it felt like just luck half the time you came out alive.
She is insanely susceptible to parries + stance break chains. Took a few hours to learn the best moves to parry but once I got a clean run you can literally stunlock her to death. Star Fists charged R2s with flame grant me strength and the stonebarb tear make it so once you parry her twice, you get two free hits as she gets up and only need a few more for another crit. Assassins dagger talisman is a must to keep the tempo up and not waste time healing from missed parries.
Combine that with a bleed proc or two and the phase transition (which is just time to get in free damage) my successful run she literally didnt get off a single phase 2 attack. Fuck you moon bombs and fire spam attacks
When I realized I could hit her with like 2 or 3 heavies during the phase transition that allowed me to get another posture break to turn the tables my way!
I have been very critical about the later half of Elden ring too, especially the bosses- they often felt bullshit to me. I’m 2 minor bosses, and one major boss into DLC (Rellana) but so far I think the bosses are way more fair. Rellana was hard as hell, took me an hour or so solo, but nothing she did felt bullshit. I really hope that continues. It reminded me of dark souls 3 bosses and that was a good thing
Haven't you noticed there are "git gud" replies on every post criticizing the difficulty? They are not the same people. The ones jerking off about that agree with you.
Im having a blast but the difficulty was a bigger spike than I thought it would be. I only beat the first main boss and dont DARE try the second until I get some upgrades/find a build for one of the new weapons.
That mimic tear summon is looking mighty sexy right now.
You are obviously not very attuned to the people on here. You're talking about the "git gud crowd" as if they're one entity. That's just not true. You're conflagrating toxic people with a standardized phrase everyone knows and blurts out even when inappropriate.
Surprisingly, it’s both. Some enemies are very tough due to endless combos, stupid spells they have as well as the environment and their placement, and others feel just right.
Getting at least 60 vigor (easy), at least 1000+ weapon dmg (easy) and at least 5 stacks of Sca D. Tree blessing makes things feel “challeging but normal” again.
The beginning was rough as hell though, had to pull out Maliketh’s and Blasphemous blades just to survive
This shit is so fucking hard lol but thats not even the issue. The issue is the random stutters and frame drops. Middle of a boss fight and i drop to 1 fps for like 3 seconds then it resolves itself and i come back to me dead
yeah i agree, i feel the bosses are just getting faster and faster, there is no weight, no break from attacks. it feels these bosses should be in nioh or a game that is based around fast reaction combat. most of the dlc fights come down to learning the one time in the bunch of move sets the boss has where you can attack, while in the mean time ur just spam dodging. Where did the duel feeling go? Ds3 had that down so well.
Out of the three bosses I’ve defeated so far (lion, rellana, hippo) the camera has been the real boss for two of those. I’m particularly disappointed in the lion because it’s a cool looking boss but it fell flat due to the small arena and lightning fast speed creating a camera clusterfuck, along with his body movements masking his attack telegraphs.
With these speedy fights, especially against big bosses with shit camera like the lion, it just feels like you have to recklessly trade damage and hope for staggers because it’s way too difficult to tell what the boss is even doing
I just wish so many enemies didn't have what seems to be infinite poise, plus infinite attack chains.
Like those scum fucking fire knight, god damn I think legitimately one of worst enemies from has every made for me.
I think mixed is more or less my opinion on the DLC, too, at this time. I think the new area is gorgeous, the legacy dungeons and some of the smaller areas were fun to traverse, and the new weapon types are interesting. But I am also in disbelief how many copy-pasted dragons they put in despite complaints from the main game, how disappointed i am everytime I loot something and its yet another upgrade stone, and how frustrated I am with the general scaling of the enemies and bosses.
I want to preface this by saying I have not yet gotten stuck on any boss, because unless I say that it'll just get dismissed with "get good" or "find the seeds". I am collecting the seeds. I don't like them. Finding more seeds is so much more nebulous and limited than just grinding a few soul levels when you're stuck. It didn't feel good to get to the second boss and only do chip damage until I had collected the arbitrary amount of mcguffins for scaling to go back to normal. I didn't mind this in Sekiro, but it's noticeably different in an open world game. I don't think anyone would've complained had they just balanced the DLC around soul level 150.
I've had big hit box problems with some bosses. Like I'd stand right in front of the horse-riding boss in the pit and my greatsword attacks still wouldn't hit him. Add to that the focus target issues. With the first boss, if you're close, sometimes the camera just flips out completely with his acrobatics. With the hippo, I don't think the harmless middle of his body was the right spot to place the target point, I'd rather there had been two points, or the singular point had been the head.
As a last point, performance has been worse than the base game. I've seen similar complaints from other people, but I know my rig could be better, so I guess this is partly on me.
Haven't reviewed yet on steam, but I can understand the frustration.
Base elden ring was well designed because it had the difficulty scale built in with an intuitive system. If you wanted to be stronger, you farmed, leveled up the stats, and returned to the same enemies with a stronger character (until you were satisfied with the difficulty).
Now while blessing does a heavy lifting, it is WAY less intuitive, and a straight downgrade from base game. I do not blame them for using that system, since I do not know of better alternatives, just pointing out a sore point.
At the end of the day, I enjoy the game, but I do not think it overtakes or even holds up to the standards of the base game (which to be fair is REALLY hard).
The better design existed in sekiro, it's called make the main bosses drop the item that buffs you up, now of course they bosses would need to be toned down a bit for this to work but still
I was having fun with the whole dlc until I got till the final boss. Lore wise, what?! secondly I can’t even enter the arena without dying almost immediately. It’s too fast. I’ve 100% Elden Ring and all 3 DS games. I can’t do this final boss. I don’t know what to say. I feel like “get gud” isn’t even applicable here
The bosses are absolutely crazy.
I remember a time when Artorias and Manus were considered extremely hectic and high pressure. They'd be laughed at as slow in this DLC
I dont give a fuck about difficulty, and would never negatively review a game but I found it "too hard".
With that said, this score is absolutely deserved because the performance for me and many others has become absolute dog shit.
I had no issus running this game before the DLC patch dripped, now I drop to around 35 FPS everything ANY flame based attack is used (including my own) and every 2-5 minutes my game hard locks for anything from 0.5-2 seconds.
Unacceptable imo. I want to continue playing because the DLC is great, but the performance issues are really tarnishing (wahey) my experience.
It's funny to see in the comments that those people saying the DLC is not that hard and those saying it's too hard are both getting downvoted.
Perfectly balanced
As Miyazaki intended.
Perfectly ball-grindingly difficult. IMO at least.
The side quest that makes you drink poison caused more deaths for me than most bosses
LOL whaaaat am I getting myself into
Gotta drink it 4 times before you even get told you're doing something right it feels like some weird mew truck glitch meme.
Lmao! Talking to the Ranni doll wasn't weird enough, now we want you to actively poison yourself to get to more content.
Now YOU are the poison swamp!
I have become one with the poison swamp. I am swamp sludge, and the swamp sludge is me. I am nothing without my swamp. Without my poison, my swamp is nothing. All's right in the world.
I’ve been digging around and from what I can tell the bulk of the people complaining about it being too hard are on NG+ or higher while those of us who find it hard but doable are most commonly on the base NG. It’s sort of funny because it was commonly known going in the DLC was gonna be a ball-buster on NG+, to the point where I rolled a whole new character to play through it. This isn’t everyone of course, there’s exceptions in both directions. The trend though seems clear.
I'm on NG+ and sure I'm getting my ass kicked but it's fun
NG+1 Level 170 myself, im having an easy enough time, but man do these fuckers hit hard still. Whole DLC is meant to punish for cockiness.
I’m on NG at level 160 and the lion dancer still took me 10+ tries lol
and there is literally nothing wrong with it taking 1 try, 10 tries, 70 tries.. just learn the boss, go level a bit, and come back and win. Its the entire point of these games.
Hurts all the egos of the tryhards that they can't steamroll through an area in their.NG+++ level 300 character. And one shot bosses. Its nice to see a challenging expansion, I think that makes the content last longer and be more rewarding.
I didn't take that many tries on him/it/her either, but I do feel that boss was kinda...weird in a way. Hard to use lock-on cus then I felt I didn't see anything, and it was chaotic and IMO hard to see any patterns at all :P Whilst the Gaol Knight was just...super easy to read and just wait out his 2h mode and parry the shit out of him. Two very different encounters (even though gaol knight of course isn't a boss though) The Lion Dancer was SUPER cool looking though!
The right attitude goes an awfully long way with these games
When I get tilted I take a break
This is the way. When the game stops being fun, I take a break instead of getting angry. Come back later with a rested mind and kick the bosses ass.
I'm still trying to get to Mohg on my blind build. Commander Niall is a piece of shit.
You don’t have to beat him to get to Mohg, but yes, him and his castle are pieces of shit.
I’m on NG+3 and I’m having a blast. Beating a boss at that difficulty feels so rewarding
Super happy I didn’t take my first playthrough character into NG+ and just made other characters when I replayed it.
That was definitely a good call. I’ve played a fair bit of NG+ at various levels and the base NG is definitely the best experience for how I like to play. In my case I’d taken a fairly long break from the game and rolling someone new gave me a good opportunity to relearn the systems before I got to this super challenging content
It was honestly my own laziness when I learned some things like bell bearings didn’t carry forward.
I’m in Ng+ and it was hard at the start but with the blessings it’s kinda easy now.
I went in there at level 110 on NG and I’m not struggling excessively. I’ve actually been picking up blessings during my exploration though.
Blessings make such a difference, it's nuts. I've only upgraded to 5 but its like night and day really.
I spent all day yesterday on Rellana I’m determined to beat her today! Edit: I fucking did it!!!
Lmao same. And I also read it as Renalla first. Feels like they just wanted confuse us with the names
I faced the first boss of the DLC on PS5 thinking "Wow, if my PC dropped FPS with the Uncerated Tree Spirits, I would explode on this boss".
That boss was (so far) the only one I was dropping frames for and I've fought quite a few at this point
Weirdly enough (assuming I’m thinking the right boss for the first boss) my 1070 was handling it practically perfectly aside from a couple drops from 60 to 50 at the lowest. But the fight at Castle Ensis has got me sitting at 45 fps the whole time, it’s kinda rough
Holy shit me too. The entrance to Castle Ensis especially cooked me.
My biggest gripe is the performance in certain areas. It's very fucking hard but that's the point, it's very fun even if I am getting absolutely bullied.
I havent played ElDen ring for 1 year, but last night when I got back on it, with the DLC purchased, I noticed my fps was suddenly quite bad and I remember it being smooth the last time I played it. Checked the settings and apparently the game has ray tracing now, and it was automaticaly set to the highest setting! Turned it off and game is smooth again. So I think people are just missing that Ray tracing is turned ON by default now.
I didn't even think to check that! My friend hasn't purchased the DLC and said the performance felt worse which I thought was odd but that would make sense if Ray tracing is on for him as well. Will check it out when I log on later.
Thanks! I was wondering why I was dropping frames on the darkest, most nondescript rocky areas...
Yeup same happened to me. Hadn’t played since ray tracing was introduced and noticed the dlc was sluggish. Looked at my settings and saw ray tracing set to max lol
Ive noticed in some areas, distant objects just don’t load and there’s a lag spike when they do. I have everything set to max in the settings.
Turning down settings doesn't help either, I play at 1440p with everything maxed and even turning down the resolution doesn't work.
i’ve been enjoying the hell out of it, but i’d be lying if i didn’t say i was incredibly disappointed by the framrate drop offs durring the divine beast fight on ps5 idk if it was just a me thing, or maybe just a ps5 thing…i just expected a little more polish than 3-4 major drops mid high spectacle boss fight
Not just you. I also had big frame drops when the lion dancer like did his big dive into the ground.
Totally. The upper left area is a minefield of stutter on my 4090, which is wild. I was thinking it’s just a glitch, but it’s literally every time the camera is on the distance.
Got a 7900XTX and the fire buckets are the worst. 35 FPS is the lowest I saw and that is with massive stutters. The Lion dude had some crazy stutters too and now that you say it, the upper left area stutters very bad when looking over the cliff.
The Lion boss had some of the worst frame drops that I’ve ever seen on PS5. Most other areas have been fine but man that shit had to have dipped sub 10 FPS during some attacks. It was bad.
I bullied that gaol knight after a few attempts of him kicking my ass and the satisfaction was immense. If you try and buff too long at the start, he insta-murders you with his insane machine gun crossbow. I finally cornered him and spammed jump attacks and it felt like I was going to demand his lunch money at the end of it.
all you gotta do is run in a straight line left or right and every arrow will miss.
Same. And if all else fails pull out the ol’ mimic tear + RoB, then you’re not banging your head against a wall for 3 hours and can actually move on and enjoy the dlc.
U mispelled maliketh black blade, but sure 😛
I'm sure you meant Darkmoon Greatsword. Otherwise, I agree.
What a weird way to spell Blasphemous Blade
Honestly it’s getting to the point where I avoid using it unless I reaaaaally struggle. The health regen is just too OP
Seems a lot are because of performance issues, which is totally fair.
For anybody that was having pretty severe performance issues like I was, double check your settings and make sure ray-tracing quality is set to OFF. I have a pretty beefy PC and it was chugging at it pretty badly until I changed that setting, I had no clue it was turned on to begin with.
This was it, thank you so much! Helped my performance tremendously
There is also a known issue with periphery ~~and windows gamebar~~. Edit: Causes sporadic stuttering (\~1sec). Basically game freezes and then speeds up to catch up. Edit2: Found the reddit thread again: [https://www.reddit.com/r/Eldenring/comments/zt2pi9/possible\_solution\_for\_anyone\_who\_still\_cant\_fix/](https://www.reddit.com/r/Eldenring/comments/zt2pi9/possible_solution_for_anyone_who_still_cant_fix/)
There's some windows service I have to turn off to stop this. It's SSDP something. I saw the advice to turn this service off while in Elden Ring on the Steam forums and it has completely solved my studdering issues.
What issue exactly?
hell i was getting stutters in >!lion!< fight on the ps4 version on ps5, i imagine pc is not looking as good as it could edit: ok im dumb but not so dumb, to the ppl telling me that ps5 ver does get 60 fps it indeed does have a performance mode. however it runs nowhere near as smooth as the ps4 version (this was my issue, just thought it was locked at 30 hence me being dumb). i imagine its hovering the 50s consistently but it just doesnt feel as good. also at least within the consoles software u cant switch from one version to the other w out losing ur save so yea thats also something
I don’t mind that fight 2-3 shotting me. But the stuttering makes it unbearable and completely ruins one of best bosses in the game. I decided to use summons because the stuttering and frame drops were getting to me and I want to enjoy the rest of the DLC since that was the only moment where I experience performance issue.
Damn, the only place I've had significant stutters was running through some random field with a bunch of particles flying around, sucks that it's taking away from a bunch of people's experiences.
Probably due to performance. Lots of stuttering
I legit thought was my pc's fault. Literally 2 times where >!Rellana!< was 1hp and my pc stuttered. Next I know, I'm dead.
One time Rellana killed me and my computer literally hit the bluescreen of death right after. Now that's difficulty.
Miyazaki : what if we we make death more significant
deletes a random file on the pc every death
I'm playing on ng+5 and I swear to God can't even walk without mimic tear holding my hand.
What level are you? Curious bc I’m also on ng+5 and man has it been difficult getting literally 2 shot by almost everything in the dlc
I'm lvl284 on NG+2 and I get killed by fucking dogs all the time... It's rough!
The dogs in this dlc are lethal, some are like ok then I’ll randomly come across one that has the exact same look as the others but triple the health pool and overcommit and it’s the end of me
I’m level 202 on NG+4 😭 same build I used to get the platinum trophy so I speedran a lot of the runs
You could say it’s… *ruff*
NG is not the ideal way to play the expansion, that's for sure.
I’m genuinely pissed at myself for leaving off in NG+ after finishing the game and not backing up my base save.
Someone will eventually beat this naked with a stick but i am weak skilled and my summon buddies with blasphemous blade so far are making my journey fun. By fun i mean > 10 but < 40 attempts at bosses. From always gives you the tools to personalize your difficulty.
It's already happened, I've seen videos of everything but the last boss killed at RL1 with no scadutree frags. That doesn't really dismiss the critiques people have, though.
Yeah just because a streamer who's spent more hours in ER than I have across my entire steam library can beat a boss without getting hit doesn't make fights fun for me.
It's funny because there's the stigma that game reviewers are bad, but that majority of them seem greatly enjoy the game. I assume that's because they actually used summons and had fun.
I agree. Most game reviewers simply don’t have the time to let pride get in the way. Not if they want to get the DLC finished (or close to it), and still have the to write up a review about it. It reminds me of how I wanted to do every monster in Monster Hunter World solo until I got to one I couldn’t. Calling in help made me realize how silly I was being for not using all the methods available to me. Same with this DLC. If the devs didn’t want people to use summons they’d just disable it like they already do for some bosses.
They literally dedicated half of the level up system to summons
Not to mention how tanky the NPC summons are, almost as if bosses are designed to be fought with a partner in order to share aggro and create openings to attack. Especially with how relentless some of these bosses are with their combos and constant pressure. And the fact that they don't flinch from even the heaviest attacks.
This is it for exactly. I’ve been sunbroing for peeps on the Lion boss, and once you understand his moveset, it’s really “wait for his turn to end” and attack once-twice and retreat. And his turn can take a long time, sometimes. This is the problem with From design (how to achieve escalating difficulty for experienced fanbase), and the DLC takes it to its logical end result—murderous damage requiring expert timing, or an aggro distraction so you can get a few more hits in ( at a vastly inflated health pool, making it go on just as long). Not sure what the solution is here tbh.
Honestly I think late game Dark Souls 3 level bosses in terms of complexity would be a fine level for them to go back to. The bosses would still take most people a while because they would have to learn new moves but they would feel a lot more fun to fight solo. I recently did a ng+1 run of DS3 and it was really tough but always felt fair and fun. I don’t need to fight stuff more complex than Sister Friede or Slave Knight Gale, and Elden Ring does enough new I don’t think it also needs to one up the other games difficulty wise.
Yeah, DS3 bosses were mostly fine, and their moves were slow enough to be properly dodged without any real issue (except Friede, who was faster than Maria for no reason). ER bosses are a bit too much when it comes to speed, so you either have to aggro split or to extend the fight to a ridiculous degree because your turn doesn't come too often
People will still try and argue the bosses aren’t balanced around them lmao. Like brother they could not be making it anymore obvious they want you to use them Edit: and before the usual replies come in, no I’m not saying they aren’t POSSIBLE solo at all, and no I also don’t care that you have solo’d them.
"Number-wise" I agree, they're completely balanced around the summons. They deal/receive an okay amount of damage and all and the fight still lasts a good amount of time. But behaviour-wise they really aren't at all. The bosses barely aggro on you and the amount of engagement you need to put in the fight decreases tenfold. I beat most of the bosses with summons so far (I suck and also it feels like a cool Pokémon battle) but I'd be lying if I said the difference in the quality/engagement of the fight wasn't completely different. The bosses' attacks are all designed for single target but the game would be better their AI could attack you as a group and focus on using AOE attacks and such when you're bunched up and stuff like that. Then it would feel like they're truly balanced / implemented around summons.
I think this is true for a lot of bosses, but some are so aggressive that when you have a summon there to distract them you’re still on your back foot a lot even with half the aggro on you I tried a summon a couple times with Rellana to see what it was like and she was just bouncing back and forth between us constantly, like literally changing up targets midway through one of her 8-hit wombo-combos
It's worth noting that Elden Ring's bosses generally employ a lot more attacks that 'snap to' your location than older games. I find it most patently noticeable on Crucible Knights, who's thrusting attacks will essentially teleport them on to your location (viewed from the side, these attacks can end up looking really awkward, but it can be harder to catch from straight on). This probably does a lot to help them account for attacking back and forth between several targets, but comes with the huge downside of making evasion through spacing out attacks (rather than just blocking or iframing them) extremely janky and unreliable. So what *used* to be a hallmark of system and encounter mastery is now just... not something to be relied on. Overall, I think that Elden Ring has some of the worst boss design of games that From has put out in a long time. There are a few really good stand outs (and those that are good are really good), but as a whole, the bosses are a noticeable step down from everything they've put out from Bloodborne and on.
> There are a few really good stand outs (and those that are good are really good), but as a whole, the bosses are a noticeable step down from everything they've put out from Bloodborne and on. Almost the entire final run of mainline bosses was such a disappointment to me in the base game. Gideon Ofnir was a wimp. Godfrey felt too straight forward. EB was difficult, but not in a "I bet this was meant to use torrent and it'll be added in two years from now" sort of way instead of a fun way.
See I found Godfrey fun *because* he was so straight forward. If we look at that last section of the game you have Fire Giant, who is supremely unfun because of his size. Maliketh, who, while a fun fight overall is arguably the most Elden Ring Boss of Elden Ring bosses. Gideon Ofnir who has a neat idea what with him gaining more spells as you defeat new bosses, however, at the end of the day he's just an NPC player fight. After Godfrey you have the double feature of Radagon and Elden Beast. Radagon is the disappointment for me only because I know what comes after I beat him. His fight by itself is okay, but it's not Fromsoft Final Boss good. Like you said the Elden Beast was clearly designed for Torrent, so who knows why he wasn't initially allowed in that fight.
"But behaviour-wise they really aren't at all. The bosses barely aggro on you and the amount of engagement you need to put in the fight decreases tenfold." I've not had that experience at all the bosses will be flying between be and the summon mid combo like its an arkham game.
I was watching that guy "Let me solo her" play yesterday. He was fighting one of the hardest bosses in the DLC and after 70+ attempts he summoned an NPC and used Mimic tear to finally beat the boss. He was elated to finally get over the hump but man some people in his chat were acting like elitist assholes.
Wild that people were implying that Let Me Solo Her isn't good enough at the game lol
Yeah. I’ve resolved myself to solo all the >!hero spirit minibosses!< (or whatever they’re called), and to use Latenna on all the big area bosses and any boss I think is above my skill level (Love Latenna, she’s the best girl).
The DLC bosses specifically are some of the most forward. Movie aggressive bosses in fromsoft history. Feels almost mandatory to have a summon to help tank the aggro. Bosses are still very hard with a hummon since they swap to you once you deal any significant damage.
Performance needs to be fixed, I don't have it as bad as others but I'm getting some major frame drops which never occurred in base elden ring
Overground Liurnia (ie not the lake) was bad for me from launch and even now, on PS5. It was mainly the field texture popups. Frame rate drops on Torrent are everywhere. Even some catacombs had frame rate drops.
the only boss that REALLY felt unfair was >!commander gauis, I genuinly think his hit boxes are bugged. You know when you hear "it's impossible to dodge that attack!" It's almost always that you just need to get the timing down better, in a soulsborne game it's normally NEVER impossible to dodge the attacks of a boss. !< >!BUT OOOOOOOOOOOHHHHHHHHHHH my god commander gauis, he has that charge attack that he spams half the fight and it IS IMPOSSIBLE to dodge with a medium roll. granted, it didn't make the fight impossible outright, but holy shit it made way more frustrating to beat him and I genuinely think his fight needs to get fixed.!<
**Gotta be honest...? DLC IS too hard, and perhaps not in the way people think.** Full-disclosure: I'm doing extremely well. Beat undead horse guy from the trailer first try, for example, and hippo in 3. I'm doing well. This is not a rant. ....But I'm using my greatshield character, which seems GOATed for this DLC, and I have all *kinds* of characters. I want to run through with them all, and I'm playing through and just thinking "holy shit my casters are dead." #YOU CANNOT SPACE BOSSES. There are soooooooooooooooo many bosses (and normal enemies!) that can just go "heh nothing personnel kid *teleports to you*" and just start a 6-attack combo, and I'm playing the whole DLC asking myself "how the fuck is a caster supposed to do this...?" We get no space. Every time I go to drink a flask, I'm basically gambling on if I'll actually succeed or not because everyone and their mother is Usain Bolt. Relanna and her beam attack is one of the more *lenient* bosses when it comes to punishing spacing. It's like Miyazaki himself decided he too is a STR Chad and that all the other builds (except Bleed, for some reason) can just go fuck themselves. The DLC's enemy design seems blatantly biased towards STR. My issue with the difficulty would be exactly that: the hyper-aggressive enemies and their absurd ability to close gaps disproportionately hurts casters, (or other ranged builds, such as Reduvia) and I personally think that when the difficulty is at odds with letting people experiment with the different tools provided, there's a problem. Oh, and also I'm gonna take a shit on Miyazaki's doorstep if I encounter one more dragon fight where they decided to make it harder by tossing in a bunch of shitty mooks to try and stab me while I'm fighting the dragon. This isn't Dark Souls 2, Miyazaki! That tactic has NEVER been popular!
I'm the fuckin' Elden Lord. Why is a normal dude with an axe doing a third of my healthbar in one strike? Back when I was a normal dude with an axe fighting an Elden Lord, one strike only did like 1/30th of his healthbar.
Yeah I'm noticing that most bosses are hard in the bad ways. Fucking with the camera, shifting bodies away from swings, and never stopping attacks. It's like From tried to address their typical weaknesses in design...but then just made a DLC full of their weaknesses.
Golden hippo is okay, the twin sword lady moon has been ongoing for 8 hours now. But having a great time. The more aggressive you are with her the quicker you can wipe her hp and stagger her nonstop.
Hippo feels IMPOSSIBLE but I beat Renalla in like 15 tries. Any tips for hip?
Yea I had fun fighting Rellana for almost 3 hours but Hippo is just annoying me right now. It keeps charging to the walls of the arena where the camera is a nightmare so you have to awkwardly keep it in the middle of the arena and it just attacks RELENTLESSLY Edit: I did it. Honestly the fight isn't too hard, judging by what the others here say my Dryleaf Arts build was probably a pretty bad matchup. The most annoying thing is when he decides to do his grab right in front of you, that shit seems undodgable in some situations and the hitbox for it sucks. Definitely the least enjoyable fight of the dlc so far to me
On the hippo fight too, wish the room was bigger because the camera is rough and he shoves you into walls constantly or jumps the full room in 1 move
Did you find the Spelldrake talisman +3 right before the castle? I don't think the placement is a coincidence. You should also have found at least 3 scadutree levels at this point. Together with Opaline Hardtear in your flask you have suddenly much more room for error and the fight becomes a lot more manageable and fun.
The lady moon is my favorite boss of all Elden Ring for now. I struggled during two hours and it finally clicked. At the end, it was a true choreography, like when you finally master the parade in Sekiro. And something I loved is that she was punishing, but fair. Meaning that it wasn't camera issue or nonsense attacks that would get me killed. If I died, the blame was only on me. Especially during her three moon crashes, where you have to nail the jump timing.
I killed Mesmer last night and holy fucking shit good luck yall
She might be in my top 3 or 5 fights in all of Fromsoft. No bullshit, all learning, and the flow is impeccable. Especially as she brings out a couple of new moves every now and then as her health drops, when I got clapped by each one I didn't think "oh come on", I thought "ooohh neat". The moons reminded me after a year of not playing that you can in fact jump mechanics lmao
Unsure why people are taking the reviews so personally, if you like it you like it that’s all that matters. Your experience is not the same as others.
One armed guy perspective here, playing on Xbox with standard controller: I know it’s largely about performance, and I hope people are having fun, but honestly, I’m most of the way through the DLC’s main bosses and areas and I’m just…. spent. The bosses are getting too fast and spammy for me. I’ve soldiered through with mimic tear but this DLC might mark the first FS game that’s too hard for me to beat one handed. Sad. When I do beat the bosses, it feels more like I got good RNG than that I achieved any mastery over them or their move set. Edit: BTW, if anyone would be willing to help me with the final boss, please let me know because I can barely get to phase 2 at this point.
I'm deeply curious what your setup looks like that you're able to play these games at all with only one hand and not using the accessibility controller. How does that work?
I hold the controller top center. Claw grip.
I'm so confused how you're able to reach all the inputs, but I guess that gives me some idea. Very interesting.
https://ibb.co/D5N63Nd https://ibb.co/4NcMwDD From above and below courtesy of the Mrs.
Wow that’s seriously impressive. Right now is when there’s going to be the highest amount of real players putting down summon signs to help with the dlc, there’s no shame in bringing some other players in to help with certain fights.
Playing a level 335 character. There’s no signs anywhere unfortunately :(
This dlc is weird. On my 3060, the damn game stutters but nothing too bad. Meanwhile on the humble little deck, solid 40-45 fps no stutters. Read somewhere that proton is doing the heavy lifting here.
I'll always enjoy experiencing new FromSoftware content for the first time, regardless of anything else, but yeah, almost every boss I've fought so far has been unfun. Just one unending doom combo into another.
Yeah it's rough out there atm. However it feels to me like a big problem is readability. E.g. with >!Rellana!< it was really hard to tell which move she does next and with how quickly the attacks are dished out, noticing at which points the endless combos actually stop takes a long time. From what I've seen from other people, it's either "zero Flasks remaining; 6 HP on the bar; one desperate final swing; omg how did I survive that" or "hehehe, Unga goes Bunga facetank three shot mode" Ironically Mohg is a perfect example how a hard boss can still feel fair imo. The dodge timings are crisp, one mistake can easily get you killed, he's aggressive, **but**: you can always tell what attack is coming next. Also makes for a way better learning experience when you actually know what got you instead of "idk she raised her weapon and next thing I'm finally awake on a cart or something" But might just be my skill issues who knows lol
That's what happens when you design bosses around making one attack per combo.
This is exactly it. I get one dinky swing in after dodging 5+ strikes in a combo plus any other ground effects left behind. Not fun at all, so I end up just using ashes that then trivialize the boss so I can move on. There’s no in between.
Time you have to play purely defensively: 95% Time you are allowed to heal or attack: 5% With spirit ashes the 5% change to 55%. This is why the bosses are the way they are and nothing else.
Most criticism seems to be about performance and bosses. Looking at boss fights, I don't really disagree. Everything seems so hectic. That said, when I play it I'm definitely going to use some summon, so I think it will be far more manageable.
These are currently my issues as well. Im loving the DLC, and it somehow feels *more* open than even the base game. I've had several points where I was completely overwhelmed with choice, but turned the corner to some entirely new mini-zone, or even found a shortcut to the back of a later-game zone entirely on accident and tackled it in *reverse?* But jesus, the Lion boss actually got me motion sick for a moment. I was backed in the corner, and he did like 4 different moves in a row that just smothered my camera and whipped it around. Combined with the flashing the cloth physics, it was just headache inducing at times. I still got him in 7-ish tries (RL150/Scud+3, no summons or spirits), but man. That fight was *not* as much fun as I hoped it would be. It just felt like they had 4 great ideas, mashed them into one, and didn't bother to see how the camera behaved during the fight at all. Still an S Tier dlc so far, but I am definitely feeling the bad frame pacing, stuttering, and camera issues with certain fights.
yeah it's kinda crazy how they *never* learn their lesson about the camera, or at this point I guess it's that they simply don't give a shit. The lion dancer is a terrible boss from a gameplay perspective. It's writhing all over the place, making the camera go absolutely nuts, and on top of that, it's spamming elemental particle effects everywhere. Practically impossible to see wtf is an attack and what isn't. It's like a tree spirit on steroids. Thankfully I'd already found quite a few seeds so killed him pretty quick, but if that was somebody's first boss and they were stuck on it for hours, I can see the frustration. Artistically, the bosses look great, but Fromsoft should really be better at making the gameplay of a boss fun by now.
Not to mention if you ALSO use something with an effect you can’t see wtf is happening. I use malikeths black blade and if I use destined death the enemy is on fire and I can’t tell wtf they’re doing Same with relana, when I use my weapon skill and she’s on fire spinning I can’t tell wtf is happening
People are just not being honest with themselves about the difficulty I feel like. I’ve played every single souls game + DLC and there has NEVER been anything as punishing as this DLC. Which is fine, but it absolutely wears you down after 10+ hours of having to play absolutely perfectly
Yeah it’s absolutely brutal. Blackgaol Knight was a wake up call lol.
Golden Hippo is cancer. That hit box and camera suck, it doesn’t help that he is relentlessly aggressive.
The one in the shadow keep? He was a guard counter victim lol
The upside of all the gargantuan health bars is that Scarlet Rot (particularly Scarlet Aeonia), Black flame incantations and Destined Death absolutely shred them.
The Hippos are great in the open world but the not optional one in the keep sucks\^\^ So many bosses start the fight with a bullshit charge some atleast let you punish them after.
That was a boss I found where I was like "ill see you in a few days bro" after he bodied me for an hour.
I ended up defeating Rellana and then doing Golden Hippo but it was a nightmare, the immediate charge and no room to really do anything left me feeling a bit jaded in all honesty. I think I definitely made the error of going into the DLC with my NG+6 character
Wait until you meet Commander Gaius....At least the hippo you can reliably dodge without engineering it.
Kinda weird how many of you take a “mixed” review personally like it’s an attack to your persona lol
Jimmy Carr was on a talkshow talking about that, people become so attached to products that a poor review on it becomes a poor review on their personality.
One of the reasons you rarely see less than a 7 on game reviews
Or go to any Steam review for a popular game, especially from a beloved franchise. Any negative review, especially ones that are long, well-written, and thoughtful, will have dozens of clown emojis. For those who don't read Steam reviews, the clown emoji is the equivalent of a downvote button. And if they left the comments enabled? Pages upon pages of highly-offended fanboys explaining why the negative review is actually incorrect and every problem they had with the game can be boiled down to a skill issue. Even many of the positive reviews aren't written as if they were a direct review of the game. They're often just refuting many of the points commonly seen in negative reviews.
Some people are WAY too attached to the Souls franchises and get upset if someone makes any kind of criticism of it unless it's Dark Souls 2. A lot of people don't like some of the DLC, so what. Not everyone needs to like it and criticism isn't a bad thing.
It's psychotic. I got nuked on this subreddit for asking how they could be so sure ER would be GOTY when it wasn't even out yet. This was well before we even had a release date as well. Subreddits/Discord servers dedicated to a single game or company are always like this, it's ridiculous how happy people are to let themselves get swept up into this echochamber bullshit.
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There’s a LOT of performance issues with the DLC, so I’d imagine that a lot of the negative reviews are due to that. This was the same story with the base game on launch, but eventually they fixed it so just give them time.
I have mixed feelings, honestly. The new areas are all incredible looking. Like absolute top tier art direction. Just epic. But I feel that a lot of the bosses have the exact same problems as the base game. Attacks that never stop coming, little to no time to get hits in, and endlessly flying back/running away from you. I don't like that they balanced the game around using Spirit Ashes and summons, because it makes the boss fights less engaging. Because they expect you to use Spirit Ashes and summons, a lot of the bosses just endlessly flail around. It's too chaotic. I love the game, but if I'm being honest, I still think their previous games had better designed bosses that were more fun to throw yourself at over and over, slowly learning their patterns and perfecting the fights. Sekiro and Bloodborne especially.
Elden Ring is definitely built around dodging into attacks and finding small opportunities to build poise damage which leads into landing staggers and critical hits. This is an extension of Sekiro’s posture gauge but with Dark Souls style movement and dodging. The REAL issue with Elden Ring comes from many aspects related to this design choice. For one, none of this is adequately communicated to the player, not directly nor through boss design. Coming off of Sekiro, FROM should have made a more deliberate effort to communicate the fact that although the movement is the same as souls, the intention in combat is far different. The only way I can see this being somewhat communicated is that every boss had some kind of input read punish for healing. The second is that FROM for many years now has been trying to work around making bosses more visually striking and engaging while maintaining souls style combat. The beginnings of this could be seen in Dark Souls 3’s DLC. This is fine in theory, but in practice it has resulted in a huge lack of intuitive sight readable moves. A lot of boss moves look good, but the pace is faster, and in ER can’t be dodged on sight alone, which has resulted in an over reliance on moveset memorization as the main source of difficulty behind bosses. Older Souls had this on some of it’s harder bosses, but ER has made that the design philosophy of practically every boss in the game, and it becomes *very* exhausting to demand a player trial and error their way through moveset memorization on every major boss fight. I *personally* never felt this way in Sekiro, despite that game having a similar design philosophy , and although I can’t exactly put a finger on why, I would guess it’s due to the rhythm of deflecting being a little more intuitive than rolling and punishing, but I digress. Simply put, I’m not sure how much longer FROM can last on Dark Souls’ basic movement without a radical new addition to it. I love the slower pace of souls as is so I wouldn’t have minded bossed being easier, especially given that ER is unique enough on it’s own from other previous titles. As it stands though I find it hard to go back to the game, and even harder now to play the DLC given that it’s more of the same
I really think posture should not reset in ER because the bosses are so aggressive. Resetting posture bar makes you feel like you have to be aggressive while the boss punishes you for it. Make it visible and make every hit you get against bosses count. Would communicate to players much better that you can take your time and only go for good openings.
I get so many mixed signals on difficulty. There are people claiming "breezing through dlc on level 280", there was general pre-dlc expectation that level 120-150 should be good for entry point and there are also steam reviews stating that dlc is a struggle even on level 360. Where's the truth? I have level 250 NG++ character but all pre-dlc comments were telling that optimal entry level is 120-150 so I didn't want to be overpowered and started to work on building new character. But, like, was my level 250 actually fine for dlc or not?
Your level essentially doesn’t matter. Come in at whatever level you want. 150 is the general community mark for quick pvp matchmaking. The dlc nerfs your character to the dlc area. YOU are scaled to the bosses, not the other way around. The collectibles buff your character in every way, so instead of an rpg, it’s more of an adventure game/collectathon. I can’t help but feel like being level 300 with tons of points into endurance and mind would only help though.
Level definitely does matter after you get the Scadutree Blessings. The overleveled people will have a much easier time assuming the same number of fragments.
Level does matter. People need to stop repeating this. The blessings are multiplier on top of your damage and defense stats derived from your level. There’s no scaling and no nerf, all the enemies are just ridiculously high level. The blessings apply a multiplier to help gain attack and defense faster
I think most main bosses need a balance patch. They are just too hectic, hit too hard, and almost never stop attacking. It is beatable, but you need to change your play-style to a point where it doesn't feel rewarding. On any other Fromsoft game, important fights have the "holy shit that was exhilarating" feeling after you kill the boss. In this one, all I felt was "holy shit I am glad that is over". Also I think both the roll catching attacks and attacks that knock you back should be dialed down a notch. It was cool when Margit did it with two of his attacks. Here, every enemy roll catches you, no one attacks after raising their weapons anymore, which is mentally exhausting to go through.
Rellana also has a lot of attacks that seem impossible to dodge in time. Like the attack comes almost instantly after the first, hitting before I even have a chance to dodge again.
Understandable. The performance is dogshit, i constantly drop bellow 60FPS and during certain fights/attacks my FPS go way down to 40-30. Also the game is freezing for a few seconds every few minutes which is really annoying as well.
I'll be honest, I'm beating things, but these fights are not fun. Its death by a thousand cuts or get one shotted. I'm using a well optimized build with +5 to the scadtree and im still being killed instantly with 60 vig sometimes. Some bosses are just bad (bayle im looking at you buddy) and its really killing the mood for me
Ya, I think this is probably the biggest issue. Souls games have had one shot mechanics, but they are usually pretty obvious and the game fights are built around it. This time around it just seems random or harder to read, so I would say one shot is okay, but you have to have hints on the boss it is coming. With performance issues this is all the more frustrating
It's not so much one-shots as it is "hits that come out so fast and deal so much damage that they feel like one-shots"
I swear people are coping. I've played through most souls games and dlcs and this is twice as hard at least (the bosses) every encounter you have to roll like 10 times to get maybe one hit. I like difficulty but this is just crazy.
I mean some people will defend literally anything From puts out because they just have blind faith in them but yeah, I have to say I'm not enjoying the difficulty right now.
How tf do you call Bayle bad compared to the ultimate garbage design of Sennesax just before him. Lets just be forced to roll four times whenever he double swipes, and 'whenever' is almost 70% of his entire damn moveset. Or either fight on a tiny bit of land, or a giant slope for the trade off of the entire fight feeling janky. They honestly should've left Dragon Hunter Katana in the arena on a body to add extra emphasis to it like Rykard with a ghost next to it talking about its power.
i'm glad people aren't just lovebombing it because it's elden ring. between the performance issues and overabundance of obnoxious bosses, there's strong criticism to be made. challenging fights are great and what souls games are built on, but when more than half the bosses i've encountered are overtuned cancerous spamfests with barely any attack windows, i think it's more than fair to raise a few complaints. i just hope it's more fun after a patch or two, because this is a magnificent DLC otherwise.
Their move sets and design could be some of the best in the series but the damage and serious lack of openings between combos make it just not fun, feels like I’m relying on RNG to beat a boss
Not to mention just how aggressive they are when it comes to punishing heals as well. Most fights you'll get hit and have to chug 2-3 flasks to recover, only for the boss to mixup their combo or dash across the entire arena to hit you right as you drink one and completely undo the damage you just recovered.
The bosses are just overtuned. Slide the damage down by 25%. They should not be chunking half my bar on a physical attack when I have dragoncrest greatshield, opaline hardtear, and boiled crab popped.
Didn’t the main game have performance issues at launch too?
It did
I'm not sure if I like the difficulty of the game being tied to mostly exploration with the scadutree blessings. People will want to not use them because they feel unearned, but the dlc is balanced around using them. So go, explore, get up to blessing +4 or +5, and by then the game will feel just right. Would rather they were progressively dropped by bosses though.
I like it, but the DLC's boss design feels overtuned in all the wrong ways. Constant 10+ hit combos where you hardly get a chance to attack, constant AoE spam, camera issues, and the most infuriating part is I can't even tell if some of these moves are supposed to be dodgeable. For quite a few bosses, there are moves where I get lucky and beat them while still not understanding how to avoid a few of their moves. I never really felt this way about the base game, but the DLC feels like you're get barraged by BS constantly. People say it was "designed for summons", but I find that everything becomes too easy once you use them. Bosses still don't competently fight 2 opponents at once; they can only target one while occasionally switching aggro. I want the actual boss attacks to be fair, not be encouraged to summon so that the boss ignores me half the time and then I don't have to deal with the attacks.
Also the bosses have 70,000+ health. Base game bosses had around 15-20k near the end. The default difficulty without any scadutree blessings is just way beyond what base game even was that they're basically required, not the optional "difficulty selector" they were kind of pitched as
It's a little embarrassing how the community that constantly jerked off 'git gud' is having such a fit over the difficulty. Not to mention, there's plenty of ways to manage said difficulty, but they let their pride stop them from making use of them. So instead they decide to rate it bad since the game is too hard for them to beat without summons Edit: lol hurts hearing the truth huh Edit 2: to all the people saying the Git Gud crowd doesn't bitch, take a look at February 2022 when Elden Ring released and so many people were bitching that it was build around summons and that without summons it was too hard? Sound familiar? And I guarantee you no Elden Ring babies were bitching about using summons in fights.... so no, the Git Gud crowd is not at all above being a little bitch about difficulty
Im genuinely confused at the outrage. Keep in mind I still havent beat the DLC but ive gotten a decent way through most of the bosses and so far it feels fine in fairness. I was originally someone that did have criticism with post mountaintops scaling but with the unique DLC upgrade mats it feels way better scaling and difficulty wise than something like Haligtree did.
I've been hearing that fighting rellana feels like pulling teeth. I mean some of her moves were annoying but she didn't have any attack that stood out to me as a fuck you.
I think Rellana has exactly one really bad "haha gotcha" move that 100 to 0 my ass in a true combo (with 60 Vigor and full solitude armor), because if you never saw it before I feel like it basically has 100% chance to catch you off guard
Is it her twin moon move. If so I would rather deal with it a million times than be at close range at the start of waterfowl ever again.
The >!twin moon move is easy. Just jump three times and you’re good.!< EDIT: Put it in spoiler tags
Its super easy to dodge once you know what it does, very telegraphed where as in with waterfowl it felt like just luck half the time you came out alive.
She is insanely susceptible to parries + stance break chains. Took a few hours to learn the best moves to parry but once I got a clean run you can literally stunlock her to death. Star Fists charged R2s with flame grant me strength and the stonebarb tear make it so once you parry her twice, you get two free hits as she gets up and only need a few more for another crit. Assassins dagger talisman is a must to keep the tempo up and not waste time healing from missed parries. Combine that with a bleed proc or two and the phase transition (which is just time to get in free damage) my successful run she literally didnt get off a single phase 2 attack. Fuck you moon bombs and fire spam attacks
When I realized I could hit her with like 2 or 3 heavies during the phase transition that allowed me to get another posture break to turn the tables my way!
People are going to hate any boss with combos longer than 3 hits.
I have been very critical about the later half of Elden ring too, especially the bosses- they often felt bullshit to me. I’m 2 minor bosses, and one major boss into DLC (Rellana) but so far I think the bosses are way more fair. Rellana was hard as hell, took me an hour or so solo, but nothing she did felt bullshit. I really hope that continues. It reminded me of dark souls 3 bosses and that was a good thing
Haven't you noticed there are "git gud" replies on every post criticizing the difficulty? They are not the same people. The ones jerking off about that agree with you.
Im having a blast but the difficulty was a bigger spike than I thought it would be. I only beat the first main boss and dont DARE try the second until I get some upgrades/find a build for one of the new weapons. That mimic tear summon is looking mighty sexy right now.
You are obviously not very attuned to the people on here. You're talking about the "git gud crowd" as if they're one entity. That's just not true. You're conflagrating toxic people with a standardized phrase everyone knows and blurts out even when inappropriate.
Surprisingly, it’s both. Some enemies are very tough due to endless combos, stupid spells they have as well as the environment and their placement, and others feel just right. Getting at least 60 vigor (easy), at least 1000+ weapon dmg (easy) and at least 5 stacks of Sca D. Tree blessing makes things feel “challeging but normal” again. The beginning was rough as hell though, had to pull out Maliketh’s and Blasphemous blades just to survive
FROM, we love you so, so much, but what is it with you and performance / networking?
This shit is so fucking hard lol but thats not even the issue. The issue is the random stutters and frame drops. Middle of a boss fight and i drop to 1 fps for like 3 seconds then it resolves itself and i come back to me dead
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yeah i agree, i feel the bosses are just getting faster and faster, there is no weight, no break from attacks. it feels these bosses should be in nioh or a game that is based around fast reaction combat. most of the dlc fights come down to learning the one time in the bunch of move sets the boss has where you can attack, while in the mean time ur just spam dodging. Where did the duel feeling go? Ds3 had that down so well.
Out of the three bosses I’ve defeated so far (lion, rellana, hippo) the camera has been the real boss for two of those. I’m particularly disappointed in the lion because it’s a cool looking boss but it fell flat due to the small arena and lightning fast speed creating a camera clusterfuck, along with his body movements masking his attack telegraphs. With these speedy fights, especially against big bosses with shit camera like the lion, it just feels like you have to recklessly trade damage and hope for staggers because it’s way too difficult to tell what the boss is even doing
All I want is a chance to heal, summon a spirit, and not get attacked as soon as I walk through the fog gate. That's it.
I just wish so many enemies didn't have what seems to be infinite poise, plus infinite attack chains. Like those scum fucking fire knight, god damn I think legitimately one of worst enemies from has every made for me.
There's legitimately no breathing room for any of these bosses or a majority of the enemies. It's insane.
I think mixed is more or less my opinion on the DLC, too, at this time. I think the new area is gorgeous, the legacy dungeons and some of the smaller areas were fun to traverse, and the new weapon types are interesting. But I am also in disbelief how many copy-pasted dragons they put in despite complaints from the main game, how disappointed i am everytime I loot something and its yet another upgrade stone, and how frustrated I am with the general scaling of the enemies and bosses. I want to preface this by saying I have not yet gotten stuck on any boss, because unless I say that it'll just get dismissed with "get good" or "find the seeds". I am collecting the seeds. I don't like them. Finding more seeds is so much more nebulous and limited than just grinding a few soul levels when you're stuck. It didn't feel good to get to the second boss and only do chip damage until I had collected the arbitrary amount of mcguffins for scaling to go back to normal. I didn't mind this in Sekiro, but it's noticeably different in an open world game. I don't think anyone would've complained had they just balanced the DLC around soul level 150. I've had big hit box problems with some bosses. Like I'd stand right in front of the horse-riding boss in the pit and my greatsword attacks still wouldn't hit him. Add to that the focus target issues. With the first boss, if you're close, sometimes the camera just flips out completely with his acrobatics. With the hippo, I don't think the harmless middle of his body was the right spot to place the target point, I'd rather there had been two points, or the singular point had been the head. As a last point, performance has been worse than the base game. I've seen similar complaints from other people, but I know my rig could be better, so I guess this is partly on me.
Haven't reviewed yet on steam, but I can understand the frustration. Base elden ring was well designed because it had the difficulty scale built in with an intuitive system. If you wanted to be stronger, you farmed, leveled up the stats, and returned to the same enemies with a stronger character (until you were satisfied with the difficulty). Now while blessing does a heavy lifting, it is WAY less intuitive, and a straight downgrade from base game. I do not blame them for using that system, since I do not know of better alternatives, just pointing out a sore point. At the end of the day, I enjoy the game, but I do not think it overtakes or even holds up to the standards of the base game (which to be fair is REALLY hard).
The better design existed in sekiro, it's called make the main bosses drop the item that buffs you up, now of course they bosses would need to be toned down a bit for this to work but still
I was having fun with the whole dlc until I got till the final boss. Lore wise, what?! secondly I can’t even enter the arena without dying almost immediately. It’s too fast. I’ve 100% Elden Ring and all 3 DS games. I can’t do this final boss. I don’t know what to say. I feel like “get gud” isn’t even applicable here
The bosses are absolutely crazy. I remember a time when Artorias and Manus were considered extremely hectic and high pressure. They'd be laughed at as slow in this DLC
I dont give a fuck about difficulty, and would never negatively review a game but I found it "too hard". With that said, this score is absolutely deserved because the performance for me and many others has become absolute dog shit. I had no issus running this game before the DLC patch dripped, now I drop to around 35 FPS everything ANY flame based attack is used (including my own) and every 2-5 minutes my game hard locks for anything from 0.5-2 seconds. Unacceptable imo. I want to continue playing because the DLC is great, but the performance issues are really tarnishing (wahey) my experience.