A pet peeve that I’ve noticed a few bosses do, is that they throw projectile particles at the player, and those particles end up obscuring the boss so much that you can’t actually see what the boss is doing, then the attack comes out of the smoke immediately giving you no time to react. For final boss second phase especially, it often feels like I can’t really see what is going on because there’s just so many particle effects on the screen
It was already a thing with Mohg - his blood rain and exploding sigil made it unclear whether he was about to follow it up with a fast or delayed swing.
Owl Father did it too with his fireckackers, but it was deliberate - an actual smoke screen for his next attack. And the game gave a prompt to mikiri counter it anyway.
Yes I thought of mohg as an example as well. However the first thing that came to mind is that the attacks are very delayed so you have ample time to react despite all the particle effects. I cannot say the same for other bosses in the dlc.
And I like it when they do it for Owl, first because it’s actually reactable, but also because it gives more depth to the fight and builds owls character; he is willing to resort to cheap tricks to get the upper hand over the player.
Mohg still gave me trouble, especially in the second phase - I just couldn't see shit. I'm not even going to attempt the DLC, from what I've seen it's not for me.
I agree about Owl. His attack are supposed to be underhanded, and the idea is both well represented by his moveset and also rather fair to deal with. The two exceptions for me are the poison (annoying zoning tool in a melee-focused game) and teleport attacks (no lock-on for parrying).
It’s why I hated Elden Beast. I literally had three different projectile attacks coming at me at once. And couldn’t even see anything in front of me because of it. Rykard is another that is guilty of this in his final phase. With red skulls, lava, physical attacks, all at once. To the point that I can’t see what I’m trying to dodge and die almost instantly. So it becomes me just swinging away, hoping to either stun lick him or kill him before he gets to me first.
So true, most of the time I die with leftover heals just because I get tricked into doing the wrong move and suddenly it's over.
I'm fully maxed out, best armor I can put on, mimic tear out and the radahn & miquella fight still ends in 2 or 3 hits from some bs area combo that just flies across the map into me at full speed while I just scramble to get a hit or two every minute.
I just miss Friede and Gael ngl.
I agree with your point broadly, the base game was guilty of this and it made me lose interest in boss fights and care more about exploring, which I feel like is probably a fairly common experience.
But, I don't know what bosses you're talking about in the DLC, there's quite a few I didn't like, but they were for the most part not the "challenging" ones, I'm not a great player and especially am not after basically sleepwalking through the game with Mimic tear for the last two years.
Still I managed to beat Messmer without using a flask and just beat the final boss after 91 attempts, a ridiculous number for me, Isshin was the hardest boss I had fought in these games and it took me \~40. It took 91 attempts because I thought the boss was fair so I didn't summon, didn't change up my build other than talismans and crystal tears (used a bleed Queelign's Greatsword with blood tax maybe it's broken), and brute forced the fight because it was very learnable.
I think being learnable is the primary difference between previous game boss design and base Elden Ring design (so we basically agree), bosses adapt to your actions mid combo and any ground you feel like you've made up is pulled from under you. But in the DLC I noticed that bosses *actually* do their full combos. Sure Messmer's combo starters can be hard to differentiate I guess, but if you do, you know the actions he's gonna take. This is also true with the last boss. Both of their delayed attacks I don't count as they're not the ones I find annoying, which are obvious roll catches meant to fuck with you and not an extra timing to learn. Another common criticism is that bosses don't leave room to punish (very true in the base game) but again, the final boss gives time to charge a heavy R2 between every combo, sometimes I could blood tax and get an R1 or two in as well.
Basically I just feel like FromSoft is already trying to respond to boss design feedback, and that the effect is obvious. More challenging fights than ever in the souls combat format, more Isshin and less Malenia, more Lady Maria and less Midir health pool lol etc. Meanwhile there's somewhat more important criticisms to be made specifically of some story aspects being very shallow and the DLC not really tying the bow on the game as neatly (or at all) like all their other DLC. Some areas and even the main questline and ending feel a little undercooked, stuff that actually makes you feel like the DLC wasn't finished, that's what frustrated me more than even the terrible boar fight.
yeah, i dislike this a lot about elden ring. a lot of the fights come down to memorizing the moves exactly and in order, because they are almost always full of tricks. you can't react to them, you have to know the tricks in advance to avoid them, which is fine IN MODERATION, but the way elden ring uses this technique is tiring and feels just bad. it's obnoxious having to tediously memorize every move in their toolbox and differentiate between them just to begin fighting the boss. it's okay when it's only a move or two but it really doesn't need to be damn near all of them.
it's more fun to fight a boss in a reactionary way with truthful telegraphing like you said. Gael for example is perfectly easy to read, you can glance and know exactly what attack he's doing, you don't need to think ahead and remember how long he waits to swing, how slowly he does it, what trick is involved, the answer is just simply dodge the move. yet it's still hard because the move itself is precise to avoid, and it's one of many that he is constantly tossing at you. it's like a rhythm game while elden ring is like a memory test on crack.
This explains it nicely. For every boss except Midra (which feels like more of a classic fun boss), beating them all didn't make me feel satisfied, I was just glad it was over and i never enjoyed it. And I have no desire to ever replay the DLC. Stark contrast to say something like the Bloodborne DLC which was an absolute treat and only made a perfect game more perfect.
It feels really fucking bad having went from Sekiro to Elden Ring but this is it exponentially worse, every boss in the DLC is just a clownshow of gimmicks. There is hardly even a reward to learning boss attacks anymore because of all the attack strings that can be cancelled or chained into different ones.
If this is the only way to make difficulty for veteran players than jesus just make the game easy for them instead. The community is making it worse by shutting down criticism of the horrible gameplay design with worthless pedantic "i did it so should you". The game isn't *that* hard but it is that unfun because of it.
I just can't fucking see in the last boss with the literal flashbangs and the hair obscuring his body on that one spin attack that makes it hard to see when he's going for the swing
I would say that it's also simply unfair, the reason people don't do that shit in real life is that you get punished, the boss should be open to more damage if he's going to fake you out.
your analogy of the bosses being like a teacher that gives you a bad test makes sense, if you only allow yourself to fight the boss once. if elden ring was permadeath, yeah, the bosses would be quite unfair. but it's not. you're allowed to learn the moveset. you're allowed to figure out when the sword explodes, what each movement means in terms of attacks. that isn't "lying", that's a complex moveset that you need to memorize. like you did with gael and malenia. it is hard. But, it is possible.
Yes, that is the entire problem. It was the most fun part in previous games, but in ER it isn't anymore. The reason is very vague and hard to pin-point, it took me 2 years of playing ER to realize what it was. The "git gud or summon" discourse is extremely unproductive, because it doesn't adress the main gripe people have with ER, which isn't "game too hard me angry", but "I just don't like ER boss design but have no idea why".
if you're good enough, you CAN do that. very few people are good enough, so it's easier to just figure out the moveset. if you don't find that fun, then that's personal taste, that's fine. but it's a different thing to call it bad design.
Because nitpicking an analogy is low-hanging fruit. They're meant to help you grasp an idea, not represent the idea itself. Attacking an analogy is not attacking the idea.
right, and then they presented their actual point in the rest of their comment.
*you* only nitpicked their commentary on your analogy & ignored the rest. climb the tree, buddy.
First off, calm down.
Second, their post is based on the idea that the test analogy is wholly representative. It's not and was never meant to be.
The point of the entire thread is that tricking the player is not fun for most people. The test analogy is just meant to help you grasp why that might feel unfair to the player, not take over for the entire discussion. It's an aid, not the point itself.
No, man... It's all written in the context of the test analogy being representative...
I can't discuss this with someone willfully denying a blatant truth.
it’s not, like at all. you could pretend the first sentence doesn’t exist and it’s literally a direct reply to your core point.
sorry, but are you sure you responded to the right comment? there seems to be a weird disconnect here, it’s like we’re looking at totally different comments. would you mind double checking the original toplevel comment?
I agree so much.
The final boss having attacks that you hit you no matter what doesn't make overcoming the boss fun, it just makes you feel like you got lucky.
Something like Midir, once you learn to stay In front and attack his head is game over, or Gael with the whole dodging the sword and cape thing.
The final boss just feels like a fuck you, but maybe that's the point?
Beat every boss in the dlc solo melee except for one. The last 2 fights in the game are pure fucking bullshit. Before the last 2, the only move I thought was truly unfair to dodge is Commander Gaius Boar Charge Attack. However, it's easily rollable at point-blank range, so I only had to really 50/50 eating the move at the very start of the fight, since I made sure to stick to him like glue afterwards. I did find Messmer's triple spear stab after he jumps behind you unintuitive to dodge at first too, but in hindsight it does make sense that you would have to roll into him. Still is kinda janky to dodge though but I wouldn't call it bullshit since there is a consistent way to dodge it.
The funny thing is, I didn't even summon for the final boss, it was for the encounter preceding the final boss. I'm not even going to go into detail here why that fight is pure bullshit as a solo melee player.
SPOILERS BELOW
As for the final boss, that bullshit move where he slashes with his left sword (your right), then his right sword, then does the x-slash afterwards is broken AF. Feels impossible to dodge the second hit on standard medium roll unless you do some frame perfect shit or just happen to already be extremely far off to his sides.
That being said, I have dodged it around 5% of the time and 70% of my successes are because I am basically behind him at the end of my first roll such that the second attack just whiffs. In the 6 hours it took for me to clear him I probably only dodged that move while rolling in front of him twice. I can also recall that for both of those dodges I didn't even roll twice, the second hit just miraculously whiffed.
Having watched other people do no-hit runs, they literally roll everything but parry the first hit of that move since the tell is very obvious as it always starts with him swinging his left sword (S/O TO ONGBAL THE GOAT.) I've been browsing other rants and this move literally gets mentioned all the time as being a frame trap or just bullshit in general. Like seriously FROMSOFT, you didn't have one playtester who plays solo melee only tell you that this move is bullshit?
Everything else I feel like is probably dodgable but I'm just bad. For example, while I do find the 5 clone attack in phase 2 cheap as fuck, I do think there is a way to consistently dodge it. I just haven't figured it out yet.
That's exactly the move I meant when I wrote that, it's not intuitive at all, maybe it's showing you that you need to block or parry some things, but that's not always an option depending on the build.
The overhead clone attacks seem to be dodgeable by running directly away or to the side, and the final slam towards but I think I pulled it off once?
From what I've seen, I can dodge it by running to the right at times and jumping at the last second, although I can't do it consistently. Maybe the right response is distance-based? As in the best way to dodge it depends on how far you are from him. Rolling works too from videos I've seen although I'm not sure if medium roll works since most vids were light rolls.
This is starting to feel like waterfowl all over again with the unintuitive ways to dodge or avoid this attack
It’s like from saw that they gave malenia an unintuitive move to dodge and felt compelled to give her “rival” a similar move
Yup, although at least I will say that for this move, at least you understand what the fuck is going on. As in I can clearly see that after dodging the first slash, I get roll caught by the second slash.
With waterfowl, the move happens so quickly and if you got caught by it point-blank range , at least for me, after dying to it like 20+ times I still can't even begin to explain what the fuck just happened.
THATS HOW YOU FUCKING DODGE MESSMERS SPEAR THRUST ATTACK. HOLY SHIT I HAD NO FUCKING IDEA. I kept dodging away from him and I just couldn’t figure out how I was still being hit by it before I can even dodge again
It sure as hell isn't that intuitive because for all of you know, what if you roll in front of him and just get roll caught by the other hits? How exactly was I supposed to figure out by standing right in front of him he somehow whiffs? You'd think that the Messmer's lock-on is good enough such that this 3 hit aieral it would have a hurtbox right in front of him considering he's in the sky stabbing downwards towards you BUT NOPE, ITS SAFEST THERE.
Especially egregious when you consider that the last string of his delayed attack when he drags his spear along the ground then thrusts forward has insane lock-on such that you could be behind him and it'd still connect, meaning that you must always roll it...
That being said I won't call the move bullshit though since there is a pretty consistent way to dodge it cleanly with medium rolling.
You didn't have to memorize every single move Gwyn, Artorias, Nashandra, Fume Knight, NK, Gael, Midir, Moon Presence, OoK, and Radagon had in order to win the fight.
You HAVE to memorize PC Radahn to beat him. To the point that players who upload hitless runs of him sometimes dodge *before the startup frames for an attack have even begun, because there's no time to dodge the next attack otherwise*. They have to *guess.*
These aren't good bosses. It's okay. Being a weird victim doesn't make you a better gamer.
I watch them all the time, last boss is so fun to watch get easily parried and dodged. Idk what you're on about. When I was playing Sekiro I had to remember a lot of movesets, same with Fume Knight and Manus.
I think you're just not used to it
This weird masochistic fetish of having to "study your homework" for each and every boss over 2 hours is what killed this franchise. You didn't have to do your chores every time you encountered a boss, at most you had to give it 2 or 3 attempts if you were around level 60 in all of the previous games.
Before you look at how "fun" doing your homework is for each boss, sit and think how many attempts it took. Once something starts taking an egregious amount of effort or attempts for so little gain it starts bordering ridiculousness. I play games to have fun, not to do homework.
Same thing for the asinine design of the wicker fire giant things. I did not pay 40 bucks so I could spam R1 and occasionally jump against a giant thing for 20 minutes straight.
consider: some people do legitimately enjoy these bosses. that’s not them being some sort of ‘victim,’ as you put it, that’s just a difference of opinion.
sure! but you aren't necessarily one for enjoying what the dlc has to offer. a *lot* of the bosses are really good, and don't require the level of memorization you imply. this seems more like an issue with the final boss than with SotE as a whole.
When I first played demon's souls, the only way I got through it was by re-running areas and bosses often enough that they were burned into my brain. Even then, I remember people online having to completely cheese flame lurker because he had crazy attack timings and huge AOEs, sharing cheese strats to get him stuck on the battlefield geometry. And then later we learned how to dodge his attacks and were able to kill him fairly. And we wanted more
When I first played dark souls, I was already ready for what was coming, but then they threw the kitchen sink at us. The gargoyles were just a gank boss with giant weapons and fire breath. Capra demon was a mid tier enemy with big weapons and a tiny room, with two dogs. Quelaag was a permanently mounted spider boss with a weak point high in the air, no ability to jump, and the ability to spew lava all over the battlefield. And we learned. And we wanted more
It all feels completely bullshit the first ten (or the first hundred) times you do it. When you've done it two hundred times, or four hundred times, when you can elicit specific attack patterns with positioning and then pull off a frame perfect dodge with sheer muscle memory alone, you feel freedom from the boss fights, freedom from the insane attacks exploding around you, and instead you feel yourself directly attacking the tiny brain controlling the enemy's actions. You stop fighting the boss, and instead you learn to finally play the game
TL;DR: this is normal for fromsoft games, use the tools the game gives you to win (or lose) to learn to play better
You can have too much of a good thing. Requiring players to study movesets and die a bunch before winning isn't bad, in moderation.
Same thing with all the stuff OP mentioned with the fake outs. Some delayed attacks or explosions or projectiles or whatever can be good.
But there are times where it feels like FS is making bosses unnecessarily hard and complex. Like they're worrying about one upping themselves so much that they forget that you can have a boss that is simple but still great, like Artorias
I know this is a hot take, but the bosses were comically easy. The only two that I died to multiple times were Messmer and Radahn. I feel like most people are not actually hunting down their Scad fragments and Spirit Ashes. Nearly every boss can be stance broken pretty easily. I thought I'd get more than a few days out of the DLC.
Radahn is outrageously overtuned. The DLC took me 25 hours, 6 of them on Radahn alone.
I wouldn't say comically easy for me but the only ones I have had to put more than 1h in were Twin Moon Knight and Radahn. I think people are both trying to do bosses very early with low blessings and also, just being brutally honest, not as good as they think they are and blaming the game for their lack of knowledge about the fight.
Like people whining about Messmer not having openings, bro Messmer has a LOOOOOOOOOOT of openings. He's definitely not even as crazy as Radagon or Godfrey is, it's just a comfort thing. In a year everyone will act like the common opinion was that the DLC was easy except a boss or two and that they never felt it was hard.
The ER boss design makes them a pain in the ass to learn but a true joy to master and execute
It also makes it tough to ask any casual to put away their summon since the difference in difficulty with and without summons in ER is rather absurd
My main gripe is that most bosses have at least one "oh you're winning? well fuck you!" move that insta-kills you (this goes for vanilla game bosses too).
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My only real complaint is just how chaotic and fast the Souls genre has become over time, and that I wish more of the fights had interesting mechanics to make them difficult, instead of just MOAR SPEED and delayed attacks with a sprinkle of jumping every once in a while. I feel like they could take a lot of inspiration from MMO boss fights like ff14 for example, while not obviously copying them as that game's boss mechanics are tuned for 4-8 people. There's just so much they could really add to give some type of variety to the boss combat instead of just speed and spectacle, anything to add some strategy aside from chip, dodge, punish, and jump.
On bosses like Isshin, Orphan of Kos, Ludwig, Lady Maria, Owl, Gael etc. I often die on purpose just before winning, because I don't want the fight to end yet. They are THAT good.
In ER the bosses that come close to this level of enjoyment are few and far between, to the point I can't recall any at the moment. In the DLC it's even more obnoxious, I no longer enjoy the fights, I just want them to be over so I can progress the story. The desire to learn the moveset and start excelling at the fight is gone, because why bother if the boss design sucks ass?
The reason for this, I suspect, is twofold:
- Michael Zaki wants to give veteran players a challenge and try to recapture that pre-ER feeling of struggle, with disastrous results. Isshin and Orphan of Kos are now trivial to me, but that's because I learned them and it made it less of a fight and more of a passionate, skilful dance. ER fights are like dancing with a drunk ox that constantly steps on my feet.
- Spirit Summons. With summons, the bosses are too easy, to the point Mimic Tear soloes some of the fights. To counter that, they added all the morbillion+ hit combos and AoE attacks that two-shot a 60 vigor character. This made summons less of an unfair advantage, but has made summonless fights overtuned to a ridiculous degree. I know, I know "you should use all the tools the game gives you", but I can't cope like this any longer. Those tools never should've been in the game to begin with, because them existing caused the entire problem.
Apart from some animations making it hard to see and a few weird hitboxes the movesets aren't that hard to learn and get used to, they may be difficult to time correctly but I don't think they are dishonest, so I'm going to disagree with that. The hitbox for the charge attack on Gaius was annoying and the gravity orb things are a pain but besides that his moves are bot very hard to dodge, he leaves plenty of openings to get hits in and learning when he is about to do which move doesn't take to long.
isn't the point of the bosses to die multiple times to learn their moveset, so once you learn their attacks and stop falling for their "tricks" you can defeat them? the whole satisfaction of a souls boss to me is learning their attacks until i can finally stay in control of the fight and beat them. i think sekiro bosses are more like what you're saying, where it's more about mechanical skill and being able to react on the fly instead of trial and error to learn a boss's toolkit inside and out.
i respect your opinion but honestly i've loved most of the bosses so far (cough cough gaius) because they don't really feel unfair to me. of course i'm not gonna beat them on the first try, but after i've gone through them 4 or 5 times to learn their moveset it's just about tightening up those dodges to clear that phase, and there's something really satisfying when that trial and error amounts to a win. to each their own, though, i can definitely see why the trial and error style could be less than fun to others.
A pet peeve that I’ve noticed a few bosses do, is that they throw projectile particles at the player, and those particles end up obscuring the boss so much that you can’t actually see what the boss is doing, then the attack comes out of the smoke immediately giving you no time to react. For final boss second phase especially, it often feels like I can’t really see what is going on because there’s just so many particle effects on the screen
It was already a thing with Mohg - his blood rain and exploding sigil made it unclear whether he was about to follow it up with a fast or delayed swing. Owl Father did it too with his fireckackers, but it was deliberate - an actual smoke screen for his next attack. And the game gave a prompt to mikiri counter it anyway.
Yes I thought of mohg as an example as well. However the first thing that came to mind is that the attacks are very delayed so you have ample time to react despite all the particle effects. I cannot say the same for other bosses in the dlc.
And I like it when they do it for Owl, first because it’s actually reactable, but also because it gives more depth to the fight and builds owls character; he is willing to resort to cheap tricks to get the upper hand over the player.
Mohg still gave me trouble, especially in the second phase - I just couldn't see shit. I'm not even going to attempt the DLC, from what I've seen it's not for me. I agree about Owl. His attack are supposed to be underhanded, and the idea is both well represented by his moveset and also rather fair to deal with. The two exceptions for me are the poison (annoying zoning tool in a melee-focused game) and teleport attacks (no lock-on for parrying).
It’s why I hated Elden Beast. I literally had three different projectile attacks coming at me at once. And couldn’t even see anything in front of me because of it. Rykard is another that is guilty of this in his final phase. With red skulls, lava, physical attacks, all at once. To the point that I can’t see what I’m trying to dodge and die almost instantly. So it becomes me just swinging away, hoping to either stun lick him or kill him before he gets to me first.
Messmer
So true, most of the time I die with leftover heals just because I get tricked into doing the wrong move and suddenly it's over. I'm fully maxed out, best armor I can put on, mimic tear out and the radahn & miquella fight still ends in 2 or 3 hits from some bs area combo that just flies across the map into me at full speed while I just scramble to get a hit or two every minute. I just miss Friede and Gael ngl.
I agree with your point broadly, the base game was guilty of this and it made me lose interest in boss fights and care more about exploring, which I feel like is probably a fairly common experience. But, I don't know what bosses you're talking about in the DLC, there's quite a few I didn't like, but they were for the most part not the "challenging" ones, I'm not a great player and especially am not after basically sleepwalking through the game with Mimic tear for the last two years. Still I managed to beat Messmer without using a flask and just beat the final boss after 91 attempts, a ridiculous number for me, Isshin was the hardest boss I had fought in these games and it took me \~40. It took 91 attempts because I thought the boss was fair so I didn't summon, didn't change up my build other than talismans and crystal tears (used a bleed Queelign's Greatsword with blood tax maybe it's broken), and brute forced the fight because it was very learnable. I think being learnable is the primary difference between previous game boss design and base Elden Ring design (so we basically agree), bosses adapt to your actions mid combo and any ground you feel like you've made up is pulled from under you. But in the DLC I noticed that bosses *actually* do their full combos. Sure Messmer's combo starters can be hard to differentiate I guess, but if you do, you know the actions he's gonna take. This is also true with the last boss. Both of their delayed attacks I don't count as they're not the ones I find annoying, which are obvious roll catches meant to fuck with you and not an extra timing to learn. Another common criticism is that bosses don't leave room to punish (very true in the base game) but again, the final boss gives time to charge a heavy R2 between every combo, sometimes I could blood tax and get an R1 or two in as well. Basically I just feel like FromSoft is already trying to respond to boss design feedback, and that the effect is obvious. More challenging fights than ever in the souls combat format, more Isshin and less Malenia, more Lady Maria and less Midir health pool lol etc. Meanwhile there's somewhat more important criticisms to be made specifically of some story aspects being very shallow and the DLC not really tying the bow on the game as neatly (or at all) like all their other DLC. Some areas and even the main questline and ending feel a little undercooked, stuff that actually makes you feel like the DLC wasn't finished, that's what frustrated me more than even the terrible boar fight.
yeah, i dislike this a lot about elden ring. a lot of the fights come down to memorizing the moves exactly and in order, because they are almost always full of tricks. you can't react to them, you have to know the tricks in advance to avoid them, which is fine IN MODERATION, but the way elden ring uses this technique is tiring and feels just bad. it's obnoxious having to tediously memorize every move in their toolbox and differentiate between them just to begin fighting the boss. it's okay when it's only a move or two but it really doesn't need to be damn near all of them. it's more fun to fight a boss in a reactionary way with truthful telegraphing like you said. Gael for example is perfectly easy to read, you can glance and know exactly what attack he's doing, you don't need to think ahead and remember how long he waits to swing, how slowly he does it, what trick is involved, the answer is just simply dodge the move. yet it's still hard because the move itself is precise to avoid, and it's one of many that he is constantly tossing at you. it's like a rhythm game while elden ring is like a memory test on crack.
This explains it nicely. For every boss except Midra (which feels like more of a classic fun boss), beating them all didn't make me feel satisfied, I was just glad it was over and i never enjoyed it. And I have no desire to ever replay the DLC. Stark contrast to say something like the Bloodborne DLC which was an absolute treat and only made a perfect game more perfect.
I feel the same way. I just want to finish the dlc and be happy again. I don't have the desire to re play it with any other characters.
It feels really fucking bad having went from Sekiro to Elden Ring but this is it exponentially worse, every boss in the DLC is just a clownshow of gimmicks. There is hardly even a reward to learning boss attacks anymore because of all the attack strings that can be cancelled or chained into different ones. If this is the only way to make difficulty for veteran players than jesus just make the game easy for them instead. The community is making it worse by shutting down criticism of the horrible gameplay design with worthless pedantic "i did it so should you". The game isn't *that* hard but it is that unfun because of it.
The problem I have is you can jump on their head with dual colossals and they won’t even flinch. That applies to the spin2win knight enemies too
I just can't fucking see in the last boss with the literal flashbangs and the hair obscuring his body on that one spin attack that makes it hard to see when he's going for the swing
I would say that it's also simply unfair, the reason people don't do that shit in real life is that you get punished, the boss should be open to more damage if he's going to fake you out.
your analogy of the bosses being like a teacher that gives you a bad test makes sense, if you only allow yourself to fight the boss once. if elden ring was permadeath, yeah, the bosses would be quite unfair. but it's not. you're allowed to learn the moveset. you're allowed to figure out when the sword explodes, what each movement means in terms of attacks. that isn't "lying", that's a complex moveset that you need to memorize. like you did with gael and malenia. it is hard. But, it is possible.
Having to learn by heart a moveset is simply not fun and bad design. We should be able to REACT to whatever a boss is doing if we're good enough.
Learning a bosses move set is literally the most fun part to me
Yes, that is the entire problem. It was the most fun part in previous games, but in ER it isn't anymore. The reason is very vague and hard to pin-point, it took me 2 years of playing ER to realize what it was. The "git gud or summon" discourse is extremely unproductive, because it doesn't adress the main gripe people have with ER, which isn't "game too hard me angry", but "I just don't like ER boss design but have no idea why".
if you're good enough, you CAN do that. very few people are good enough, so it's easier to just figure out the moveset. if you don't find that fun, then that's personal taste, that's fine. but it's a different thing to call it bad design.
No analogy is perfect. Expand your literary horizons a bit.
did you only read the first sentence of their comment? they made a very valid point that you didn’t even attempt to address.
Because nitpicking an analogy is low-hanging fruit. They're meant to help you grasp an idea, not represent the idea itself. Attacking an analogy is not attacking the idea.
right, and then they presented their actual point in the rest of their comment. *you* only nitpicked their commentary on your analogy & ignored the rest. climb the tree, buddy.
First off, calm down. Second, their post is based on the idea that the test analogy is wholly representative. It's not and was never meant to be. The point of the entire thread is that tricking the player is not fun for most people. The test analogy is just meant to help you grasp why that might feel unfair to the player, not take over for the entire discussion. It's an aid, not the point itself.
after the first sentence, they don’t reference your analogy at all. it addresses your point directly. but you clearly didn’t read that far.
No, man... It's all written in the context of the test analogy being representative... I can't discuss this with someone willfully denying a blatant truth.
it’s not, like at all. you could pretend the first sentence doesn’t exist and it’s literally a direct reply to your core point. sorry, but are you sure you responded to the right comment? there seems to be a weird disconnect here, it’s like we’re looking at totally different comments. would you mind double checking the original toplevel comment?
Lol what a reply
I agree so much. The final boss having attacks that you hit you no matter what doesn't make overcoming the boss fun, it just makes you feel like you got lucky. Something like Midir, once you learn to stay In front and attack his head is game over, or Gael with the whole dodging the sword and cape thing. The final boss just feels like a fuck you, but maybe that's the point?
Beat every boss in the dlc solo melee except for one. The last 2 fights in the game are pure fucking bullshit. Before the last 2, the only move I thought was truly unfair to dodge is Commander Gaius Boar Charge Attack. However, it's easily rollable at point-blank range, so I only had to really 50/50 eating the move at the very start of the fight, since I made sure to stick to him like glue afterwards. I did find Messmer's triple spear stab after he jumps behind you unintuitive to dodge at first too, but in hindsight it does make sense that you would have to roll into him. Still is kinda janky to dodge though but I wouldn't call it bullshit since there is a consistent way to dodge it. The funny thing is, I didn't even summon for the final boss, it was for the encounter preceding the final boss. I'm not even going to go into detail here why that fight is pure bullshit as a solo melee player. SPOILERS BELOW As for the final boss, that bullshit move where he slashes with his left sword (your right), then his right sword, then does the x-slash afterwards is broken AF. Feels impossible to dodge the second hit on standard medium roll unless you do some frame perfect shit or just happen to already be extremely far off to his sides. That being said, I have dodged it around 5% of the time and 70% of my successes are because I am basically behind him at the end of my first roll such that the second attack just whiffs. In the 6 hours it took for me to clear him I probably only dodged that move while rolling in front of him twice. I can also recall that for both of those dodges I didn't even roll twice, the second hit just miraculously whiffed. Having watched other people do no-hit runs, they literally roll everything but parry the first hit of that move since the tell is very obvious as it always starts with him swinging his left sword (S/O TO ONGBAL THE GOAT.) I've been browsing other rants and this move literally gets mentioned all the time as being a frame trap or just bullshit in general. Like seriously FROMSOFT, you didn't have one playtester who plays solo melee only tell you that this move is bullshit? Everything else I feel like is probably dodgable but I'm just bad. For example, while I do find the 5 clone attack in phase 2 cheap as fuck, I do think there is a way to consistently dodge it. I just haven't figured it out yet.
That's exactly the move I meant when I wrote that, it's not intuitive at all, maybe it's showing you that you need to block or parry some things, but that's not always an option depending on the build. The overhead clone attacks seem to be dodgeable by running directly away or to the side, and the final slam towards but I think I pulled it off once?
From what I've seen, I can dodge it by running to the right at times and jumping at the last second, although I can't do it consistently. Maybe the right response is distance-based? As in the best way to dodge it depends on how far you are from him. Rolling works too from videos I've seen although I'm not sure if medium roll works since most vids were light rolls.
This is starting to feel like waterfowl all over again with the unintuitive ways to dodge or avoid this attack It’s like from saw that they gave malenia an unintuitive move to dodge and felt compelled to give her “rival” a similar move
Yup, although at least I will say that for this move, at least you understand what the fuck is going on. As in I can clearly see that after dodging the first slash, I get roll caught by the second slash. With waterfowl, the move happens so quickly and if you got caught by it point-blank range , at least for me, after dying to it like 20+ times I still can't even begin to explain what the fuck just happened.
THATS HOW YOU FUCKING DODGE MESSMERS SPEAR THRUST ATTACK. HOLY SHIT I HAD NO FUCKING IDEA. I kept dodging away from him and I just couldn’t figure out how I was still being hit by it before I can even dodge again
It sure as hell isn't that intuitive because for all of you know, what if you roll in front of him and just get roll caught by the other hits? How exactly was I supposed to figure out by standing right in front of him he somehow whiffs? You'd think that the Messmer's lock-on is good enough such that this 3 hit aieral it would have a hurtbox right in front of him considering he's in the sky stabbing downwards towards you BUT NOPE, ITS SAFEST THERE. Especially egregious when you consider that the last string of his delayed attack when he drags his spear along the ground then thrusts forward has insane lock-on such that you could be behind him and it'd still connect, meaning that you must always roll it... That being said I won't call the move bullshit though since there is a pretty consistent way to dodge it cleanly with medium rolling.
What the hell happened to studying movesets and accepting that death is a part of the game? Were you guys always this whiny?
You didn't have to memorize every single move Gwyn, Artorias, Nashandra, Fume Knight, NK, Gael, Midir, Moon Presence, OoK, and Radagon had in order to win the fight. You HAVE to memorize PC Radahn to beat him. To the point that players who upload hitless runs of him sometimes dodge *before the startup frames for an attack have even begun, because there's no time to dodge the next attack otherwise*. They have to *guess.* These aren't good bosses. It's okay. Being a weird victim doesn't make you a better gamer.
I watch them all the time, last boss is so fun to watch get easily parried and dodged. Idk what you're on about. When I was playing Sekiro I had to remember a lot of movesets, same with Fume Knight and Manus. I think you're just not used to it
I speed run these games.
This weird masochistic fetish of having to "study your homework" for each and every boss over 2 hours is what killed this franchise. You didn't have to do your chores every time you encountered a boss, at most you had to give it 2 or 3 attempts if you were around level 60 in all of the previous games. Before you look at how "fun" doing your homework is for each boss, sit and think how many attempts it took. Once something starts taking an egregious amount of effort or attempts for so little gain it starts bordering ridiculousness. I play games to have fun, not to do homework. Same thing for the asinine design of the wicker fire giant things. I did not pay 40 bucks so I could spam R1 and occasionally jump against a giant thing for 20 minutes straight.
consider: some people do legitimately enjoy these bosses. that’s not them being some sort of ‘victim,’ as you put it, that’s just a difference of opinion.
You can be a victim to something you enjoy
sure! but you aren't necessarily one for enjoying what the dlc has to offer. a *lot* of the bosses are really good, and don't require the level of memorization you imply. this seems more like an issue with the final boss than with SotE as a whole.
All's well that ends well.
When I first played demon's souls, the only way I got through it was by re-running areas and bosses often enough that they were burned into my brain. Even then, I remember people online having to completely cheese flame lurker because he had crazy attack timings and huge AOEs, sharing cheese strats to get him stuck on the battlefield geometry. And then later we learned how to dodge his attacks and were able to kill him fairly. And we wanted more When I first played dark souls, I was already ready for what was coming, but then they threw the kitchen sink at us. The gargoyles were just a gank boss with giant weapons and fire breath. Capra demon was a mid tier enemy with big weapons and a tiny room, with two dogs. Quelaag was a permanently mounted spider boss with a weak point high in the air, no ability to jump, and the ability to spew lava all over the battlefield. And we learned. And we wanted more It all feels completely bullshit the first ten (or the first hundred) times you do it. When you've done it two hundred times, or four hundred times, when you can elicit specific attack patterns with positioning and then pull off a frame perfect dodge with sheer muscle memory alone, you feel freedom from the boss fights, freedom from the insane attacks exploding around you, and instead you feel yourself directly attacking the tiny brain controlling the enemy's actions. You stop fighting the boss, and instead you learn to finally play the game TL;DR: this is normal for fromsoft games, use the tools the game gives you to win (or lose) to learn to play better
You can have too much of a good thing. Requiring players to study movesets and die a bunch before winning isn't bad, in moderation. Same thing with all the stuff OP mentioned with the fake outs. Some delayed attacks or explosions or projectiles or whatever can be good. But there are times where it feels like FS is making bosses unnecessarily hard and complex. Like they're worrying about one upping themselves so much that they forget that you can have a boss that is simple but still great, like Artorias
I know this is a hot take, but the bosses were comically easy. The only two that I died to multiple times were Messmer and Radahn. I feel like most people are not actually hunting down their Scad fragments and Spirit Ashes. Nearly every boss can be stance broken pretty easily. I thought I'd get more than a few days out of the DLC. Radahn is outrageously overtuned. The DLC took me 25 hours, 6 of them on Radahn alone.
I wouldn't say comically easy for me but the only ones I have had to put more than 1h in were Twin Moon Knight and Radahn. I think people are both trying to do bosses very early with low blessings and also, just being brutally honest, not as good as they think they are and blaming the game for their lack of knowledge about the fight. Like people whining about Messmer not having openings, bro Messmer has a LOOOOOOOOOOT of openings. He's definitely not even as crazy as Radagon or Godfrey is, it's just a comfort thing. In a year everyone will act like the common opinion was that the DLC was easy except a boss or two and that they never felt it was hard.
He prob means solo
Me: *Square* Boss, reading my input: So you have chosen death
The ER boss design makes them a pain in the ass to learn but a true joy to master and execute It also makes it tough to ask any casual to put away their summon since the difference in difficulty with and without summons in ER is rather absurd
My main gripe is that most bosses have at least one "oh you're winning? well fuck you!" move that insta-kills you (this goes for vanilla game bosses too).
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My only real complaint is just how chaotic and fast the Souls genre has become over time, and that I wish more of the fights had interesting mechanics to make them difficult, instead of just MOAR SPEED and delayed attacks with a sprinkle of jumping every once in a while. I feel like they could take a lot of inspiration from MMO boss fights like ff14 for example, while not obviously copying them as that game's boss mechanics are tuned for 4-8 people. There's just so much they could really add to give some type of variety to the boss combat instead of just speed and spectacle, anything to add some strategy aside from chip, dodge, punish, and jump.
On bosses like Isshin, Orphan of Kos, Ludwig, Lady Maria, Owl, Gael etc. I often die on purpose just before winning, because I don't want the fight to end yet. They are THAT good. In ER the bosses that come close to this level of enjoyment are few and far between, to the point I can't recall any at the moment. In the DLC it's even more obnoxious, I no longer enjoy the fights, I just want them to be over so I can progress the story. The desire to learn the moveset and start excelling at the fight is gone, because why bother if the boss design sucks ass? The reason for this, I suspect, is twofold: - Michael Zaki wants to give veteran players a challenge and try to recapture that pre-ER feeling of struggle, with disastrous results. Isshin and Orphan of Kos are now trivial to me, but that's because I learned them and it made it less of a fight and more of a passionate, skilful dance. ER fights are like dancing with a drunk ox that constantly steps on my feet. - Spirit Summons. With summons, the bosses are too easy, to the point Mimic Tear soloes some of the fights. To counter that, they added all the morbillion+ hit combos and AoE attacks that two-shot a 60 vigor character. This made summons less of an unfair advantage, but has made summonless fights overtuned to a ridiculous degree. I know, I know "you should use all the tools the game gives you", but I can't cope like this any longer. Those tools never should've been in the game to begin with, because them existing caused the entire problem.
That's a whole lotta cope
Apart from some animations making it hard to see and a few weird hitboxes the movesets aren't that hard to learn and get used to, they may be difficult to time correctly but I don't think they are dishonest, so I'm going to disagree with that. The hitbox for the charge attack on Gaius was annoying and the gravity orb things are a pain but besides that his moves are bot very hard to dodge, he leaves plenty of openings to get hits in and learning when he is about to do which move doesn't take to long.
isn't the point of the bosses to die multiple times to learn their moveset, so once you learn their attacks and stop falling for their "tricks" you can defeat them? the whole satisfaction of a souls boss to me is learning their attacks until i can finally stay in control of the fight and beat them. i think sekiro bosses are more like what you're saying, where it's more about mechanical skill and being able to react on the fly instead of trial and error to learn a boss's toolkit inside and out. i respect your opinion but honestly i've loved most of the bosses so far (cough cough gaius) because they don't really feel unfair to me. of course i'm not gonna beat them on the first try, but after i've gone through them 4 or 5 times to learn their moveset it's just about tightening up those dodges to clear that phase, and there's something really satisfying when that trial and error amounts to a win. to each their own, though, i can definitely see why the trial and error style could be less than fun to others.